ONE of South Korea’s biggest conglomerates with roots firmly in traditional industries is taking a leap into the unknown with its next target for growth: the metaverse.

SK Square Co., the investment arm of the massive SK Group spun off into its own stock last month, wants every portfolio company to have a metaverse presence, said managing director Huh Seok-joon, 48. Their customers should be able to use cryptocurrencies for shopping, streaming media and other transactions with the metaverse community, he said.

Corporations the world over are laying bets on the metaverse, an envisioned virtual environment where people can interact with the internet and others, supplanting web browsers and mobile apps. SK Square is moving swiftly in a bid to avoid falling behind younger, nimbler competitors: it bought a 35 percent stake in a crypto exchange last month and one of its affiliates is planning to issue a coin in the first half of next year, Huh said.

“Our business needs to evolve into the metaverse,” Huh said. “Our new interface between customers will be shifting from mobile phones to metaverse and coins will be used as new currencies on our platforms.”

SK Square is entering an already-crowded field that’s drawn the likes of Facebook-parent Meta Platforms Inc. and domestic rivals Naver Corp. and Kakao Corp. But these investments will likely take years to pay off, if at all, given the technology and software required to realize their vision of the metaverse remain nascent.

Such radical bets are rare among family-controlled conglomerates, known as chaebol in South Korea, which have been dependent on manufacturing sectors for decades. Seoul-based SK Square, split off from SK Telecom Co., is following a SoftBank Group Corp. model for investments in future technologies.

On its first day of trading last week, SK Square announced a 90 billion won (US$76 million) investment in Korbit, South Korea’s fourth-largest crypto exchange. Although Korbit’s share of the Korean market is only about 0.3 percent, SK Square saw it as a good way to enter the crypto business at a cheap valuation.

Dunamu, parent of South Korea’s leading crypto exchange firm Upbit, has a valuation of 17.8 trillion won, according to Seoul Exchange. (SD-Agencies)