South Korea is embracing the metaverse at an impressive pace, with yet another city joining the virtual parallel world. Changwon, South Korea's ninth-most populous city with nearly 1.1 million residents, has earmarked 13 billion won (ca. $9.07 million) to recreate its industrial complex in the metaverse. The project is supervised by the Korea Land and Geospatial Informatix Corporation, controlled by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.
"The city of Changwon will win the first position in the fourth industrial revolution through focusing on rebuilding the industrial structure with mobility, artificial intelligence, hyper-connection [technology] and more," declared Changwon mayor Hong Nam-pyo, quoted by Forkast.news.
The project will employ the digital twin technology, which uses real world sensor data to create an exact virtual representation of a physical object, process, or service. In practical terms, digital twin-based replicas are the building blocks of the metaverse.
Changwon's initiative follows similar endeavors by other South Korean cities. Two weeks ago, Seongnam's authorities announced a plan to launch the city's digital copy in the metaverse and issue citizenship tokens to the residents.
Last year, Seoul officials declared their ambitions to develop "Metaverse Seoul" – a digital clone of the South Korean capital and the first major city to enter the metaverse.
