SK, Naver leaders convene for metaverse collaboration

SK Group and Naver chiefs reportedly held a meeting recently to talk about working together for Metaverse. The former’s chairman Chey Tae Won and the latter’s CEO Choi Soo Yeon are considering collaboration in an effort to win the bid to host the World Expo 2030 in Busan, South Korea.

As per The Korea Herald, SK Group’s chairman Chey Tae Won paid a visit to Naver’s chief at the company’s newly-built headquarters in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province, last month. Officials of both companies said that the meeting was very unexpected and did not reveal the exact date of the conference.

It was reported that Chey, who is also the chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, turned out to be the co-chair of the bidding committee in South Korea for the World Expo 2030. Since he has an important position in the body, he has been actively meeting with business leaders and foreign officials across the world to win international support for Busan.

Industry insiders said that while working for the World Expo, the SK Group’s chairman spotted an opportunity for conducting promotional activities via Naver’s Zepeto metaverse platform. He discerned that this could be utilized to bolster Busan’s chances of hosting the World Expo.

While the company’s telecom arm, SK Telecom, is already operating its own virtual platform called ifland, it cannot be used for the World Expo bid because most of its users are locals. This is because the service is not yet available globally.

Due to this reason, Chey thinks that Naver’s Metaverse platform is the best option. Zepeto has millions of users already, and they are from different parts of the world. The Korea Economic Daily reported in March that at that time, it had already accumulated around 300 million users, and 95% of them are based abroad.

It was added that Zepeto metaverse space has a monthly active users (MAU) of 20 million as of March. Naver launched the platform in 2018, and it was made available to more than 200 countries, including the United States, Japan, and China.

Meanwhile, neither the SK Group nor Naver has spoken to confirm details or any agreement that was discussed during the meeting. It is also not clear yet how the companies are planning to move forward with the cooperation.