SEOUL, South Korea — In a sprawling studio on the outskirts of Seoul, technicians would gather in front of monitors to watch cartoon K-pop singers—at least one of whom had tails—dance against a backdrop. psychedelic background.
A woman with fairy wings fluttered around her.
All the figures that appeared on the screen were real, more or less.
The singers had human counterparts in the studio, isolated in cubicles, wearing visors on their faces and joystick controls in both hands.
Immersed in a virtual world, they competed to be (hopefully) part of the next great Korean girl band.
The stakes were high.
Some of its competitors, after failing the filter, had fallen into bubbling lava.
Aiki, one of the judges of "Girl's Re:verse," a K-pop show in the metaverse, in Seoul, South Korea, on Dec. 27, 2022. (Jun Michael Park/The New York Times)
Some say this is
the future of entertainment in the metaverse, courtesy of South Korea
, the global testing ground for all things tech.
“
There are a lot of people who want to enter the metaverse, but it hasn't reached the critical mass of users yet
,” said Jung Yoon-hyuk, an associate professor at Korea University's College of Media and Communication.
“Other places want to venture into the metaverse, but to be successful you have to have good content.
In Korea, that content is K-pop.”
In the metaverse—something we still don't know exactly what it is
—the usual rules don't apply
.
And the Korean entertainment industry is delving into the possibilities, confident that fans will gladly follow.
K-pop groups have had virtual counterparts for years.
Karina, a real member of the Aespa group, can be seen on YouTube chatting with her digital self, “ae-Karina”, in an exchange that is as fluid as on TV talk shows.
The Korean company Kakao Entertainment wants to go further.
He is working with Netmarble, a mobile game company, developing
a K-pop group called Mave that only exists in cyberspace
, where its four artificial members will interact with real fans from around the world.
Kakao is also responsible for “Girl's Re:verse,” a metaverse K-pop show whose first episode on streaming platforms was viewed more than a million times in three days.
For both projects, Kakao contemplates album releases, brand endorsements, video games and digital comics, among other things.
Son Su-jung, with other "Girl's Re:verse" producers.
K-pop singers become pixels and fight in a virtual universe.(Jun Michael Park/The New York Times)
Compared to their Korean counterparts, U.S. media companies have so far done only "light experimentation" with the metaverse, said Andrew Wallenstein, president and chief media analyst at Variety Intelligence Platform.
Countries like South Korea “are often seen as
a test bed for how the future will
play out ,” Wallenstein said.
“If any trend is going to move from abroad to the United States, I would put South Korea in the lead as to who is most likely to be that springboard.”
South Korea's experiments with virtual entertainment date back at least 25 years, to the brief life of an artificial singer named Adam.
A boy from the nineties,
Adam was a pixelated computer graphics creature
, with bangs covering his eyes and a gruff voice trying to sound too sexy.
Adam disappeared from the public scene after releasing an album in 1998.
But digital creations like him have been a hallmark of Korean popular culture for a generation.
Today, Korean “virtual influencers” like Rozy and Lucy reach six figures of followers on Instagram and promote very real brands like Chevrolet and Gucci.
Influencers have been purposely created to look almost real, but not quite;
her almost human quality is part of her appeal
, explained Baik Seung-yup, Rozy's creator.
“We want to create a new genre of content,” said Baik, who estimates that
around 70 percent of the world's virtual influencers are Korean
.
Technicians in front of monitors on the set of "Girl's Re:verse."
Contestants are isolated in cubicles but interact as avatars on screen in Goyang, just outside of Seoul.(Jun Michael Park/The New York Times)
According to McKinsey, in the first five months of 2022, more than $120 billion was invested globally in developing technology for the metaverse.
Much of that amount came from companies operating in the United States, said Matthew Ball, a tech entrepreneur who wrote a book on the metaverse.
The most notorious recent example was when Facebook renamed itself “Meta” in a multi-billion dollar attempt to embrace the next digital frontier, only to see its shares plummet and profits dwindle.
The South Korean government
is investing more than $170 million to support development efforts in the United States
, forming what it calls a "metaverse alliance" that includes hundreds of companies.
Ball claims it is one of the most aggressive programs in his class.
Yet while South Korea is "leagues ahead" when it comes to synthetic pop stars, whether their companies will play a prominent role in the evolution of the metaverse "is anyone's guess," Ball said.
In the past, government support for new technologies has paid off for South Korea.
The country built its modern economy in recent decades on the back of technology conglomerates and successfully bet on the mobile phone industry, laying the groundwork for becoming what Bernie Cho, a music producer from Seoul, called "the most connected country in the world." and wireless”.
Here teens flip through comics on their phones, watch countless hours of Korean dramas without having to use cable TV, and zealously follow K-pop stars on social media and new platforms.
On Zepeto and Weverse, fans interact with each other, sometimes as customizable avatars
, and with their favorite groups.
Kakao Entertainment—an offshoot of Kakao, the South Korean tech company that makes just about everything—introduces its artificial band in the making, Mave, as
the first K-pop group created entirely in the metaverse
, using machine learning , deepfake technology, face swapping and 3D production technology.
To give them global appeal, the company wants Mave's “girls” to be able to speak, say, Portuguese to a Brazilian fan and Mandarin to someone from Taiwan, fluently and convincingly.
The idea, according to Kang Sung-ku, the project's technical director, is that once these virtual beings can simulate meaningful conversations,
"no real human will feel lonely
. "
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