Shinsegae to build metaverse presence with Hancom

South Korea’s retail powerhouse Shinsegae Inc. will kickstart its efforts to build a metaverse presence, while seeking to buy a stake in its digital platform developer Hancom Inc.

On Thursday, it signed a memorandum of understanding with Hancom, a domestic software developer, to launch Shinsegae’s metaverse platform.

Hancom’s metaverse platform-building unit Frontis Corp. will design and develop the three-dimensional virtual platform for the retail giant, and carry out a feasibility study on the project.

Shinsegae, the operator of Shinsegae Department, online retailer SSG.COM and supermarket chain E-Mart Inc. will provide various content and services to the digital platform.

Both Shinsegae and Hancom will jointly operate the 3D virtual platform, while co-developing and co-marketing virtual goods and non-fungible tokens linked to physical assets available in the digital space.

Shinsegae is seeking to buy a stake in Kosdaq-listed Hancom with a market cap of 417 billion won. Hancom unveiled South Korea’s first homegrown word processing software for the Korean language back in 1989.

“We will discuss the size and timing of (Shinegae’s) investment,” said a Hancom official.

The to-be-launched digital space will target millennials and generation Zers, or those born between the 1980s and early 2000s.

Hancom is beefing up its metaverse platform business. It has created a metaverse platform for Cyworld, South Korea’s social network community popular in the early 2000s before Facebook replaced it.

Cyworld’s metaverse app will be uploaded on Google Playstore, allowing existing Cyworld members to communicate with each other in the 3D digital space.

Hancom CEO Kim Yeon-soo said its partnership with Shinsegae will provide momentum to its metaverse platform business and make it its main growth driver.

The combination of its software capabilities and Shinsegae’s content will help Hancom stand out among metaverse platform developers, he added.

Write to Seung-Woo Lee at leeswoo@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article