A City in the Metaverse? South Korea's Seongnam Plans NFT Citizenship

In Brief

• The city of Seongman in South Korea has announced plans to spawn a digital copy.
• “Metaverse Special City Seongnam” will digitally recreate the city in the Metaverse.
• The news follows a similar announcement by the South Korean capital, Seoul.

Officials in Seongnam, South Korea, have announced plans to digitally recreate their town in the metaverse, providing citizens with access to municipal information and services using non-fungible token (NFT) identification.

The scheme marks a growing number of projects in South Korea aimed at making the country a global hub for Web3 and the metaverse. Earlier this month the South Korean government announced that as part of the plan they would introduce a “Metaverse Industry Promotion Law” to help promote the industry.

Seongnam style
On Wednesday, officials in the city of Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, brought forward plans to recreate the city within the metaverse. The project is called “Metaverse Special City Seongnam,” and is scheduled to complete in the first half of 2023.

Work will begin shortly on the metaverse municipality, with construction set to start as early as next month.

A key component of the proposal is that denizens will be able to access key services and information via NFT citizenship. Full detail on this aspect of the proposal has yet to be revealed, but further insight is expected before pixelated spades break virtual soil.

Seongnam is a city of 1 million people; a satellite of South Korea’s capital Seoul. The capital also has plans to build its own metaverse counterpart and Seongnam has no intention of being left behind.

Seoul, Metaverse City
It has been just a few weeks since Seoul confirmed the launch of the first stage of its own metaverse city. While the plan is huge in scope, it will begin more modestly with virtual reconstructions of Seoul City Hall and the Seoul Plaza. It is hoped that the project will go live as early as Nov.

While the proliferation of virtual environments in South Korea offers great business opportunities, it is not a plan without risk. New frontiers always open the door to new crimes and the potential for criminality.

Just days ago Be[In]Crypto reported on the disturbing case of a South Korean man using virtual environments to contact and groom children.

The individual, who was not named, was sentenced to four years in prison.

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