South Korea will not rule the metaverse with game laws, science ministry says

South Korea will issue a guideline for regulating the metaverse instead of applying existing law on video games, the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) announced at a government briefing on Wednesday.

Fast facts

• The guideline that will be used to better promote and disentangle the metaverse from video games will be prepared within this year.

• “We will not make the mistake of regulating a new service with an existing law,” said Park Yoon-kyu, director-general of the Office of ICT Policy under the MSIT, while acknowledging some elements of the metaverse compare with traditional video games.

• There is ongoing debate in South Korea on whether to designate the metaverse as a video game.

• South Korea currently bans online or mobile games from adopting cashable reward systems, including those using blockchain technology, to prevent excessive speculation.

• Recently Ifland, a local metaverse under SK Telecom, adopted a point reward system that certain users can liquidate. SK Telecom told Forkast that its metaverse is not affected by the game restrictions in Korea.
• The announcement is part of the first discussion under the new cross-ministerial committee overseeing the digital data industry.