https://law.asia/nft-framework-korea/
Despite its popularity, the legal status of NFTs under Korean law remains indeterminate. Although the recently passed amendments to the Act on Reporting and Use of Specific Financial Information provided a great deal of clarity on cryptocurrency regulation, the application of the law on NFTs is not yet clear, mainly on whether NFTs would be considered as virtual assets defined by the act.
The usual financial institutions are backing NFT’s in gaming for example (the same ones who invested heavily into PC and then mobile gaming where they minted money). Mirae Asset Securities has been a major player in backing a lot of game development studios for example.
Established financial institutions such as Ground X (a blockchain subsidiary of Kakao), Mirae Asset Securities, Shinhan Bank and Hanwha Asset Management have endorsed the idea of integrating NFTs into their product offerings or business models.
That is why most of the development studios there have jumped head first into this trash because the investment money is there for the taking.
The true engine of Korea’s pop culture machine is its video game industry. In 2020, 66.9% of Korean exports in the content industry were video games, dwarfing the sales of K-pop (6.4%) and TV shows (4.5%). Major South Korean gaming companies such as have announced plans to integrate NFTs into their products and platforms.
Upon the announcement, the share prices of NCSoft rose by 30% (the daily limit in the South Korean stock market) and Krafton by 22%. Another player, Kakao Games, announced its partnership with Lion Heart Studio, the developer of the most popular online game this year, “Odin: Valhalla Rising,” to enter the global NFT market.
However, the release of such games are BANNED in South Korea. The irony of this is the fact that games were ALWAYS designed and developed targeting the domestic market first; other regions were simply a “cash grab” since most of the expensive production work is already sunk (and normally re-couped from domestic revenues). Now, these studios are “blindly” designing these NFT-based games to a demographic which they still aren’t fully clued in about (and most of the gaming community in the west, aren’t exactly enamored with when it comes to blockchain tech in games).
However, whereas the development of NFT-integrated games are allowed, South Korea’s Game Rating and Administration Committee has banned cashable and tradable NFT-integrated games in the country, thus making these games only available outside of South Korea.
So what to expect? That most of these companies will try to leverage existing IP’s and “retrofit” them in some manner to have this blockchain tech underlying it. A perfect example of this is XLGAMES leveraging ArcheAge for their ArcheWorld blockchain title. No doubt Krafton will try to find ways to do this with PUBG and possibly TERA. And NCsoft will be trying to do it across everything BUT find ways to miss the target (ahem, Project TL formerly Lineage Eternal being forever in development hell).
