Busan, South Korea's second largest city, is opening a virtual space in the Naver Z Zepeto metaverse at 12 p.m. on Friday, Korean time, to promote the city as part of efforts to host the World Expo in 2030.
The section of the metaverse, named "2030 World Expo X4 Entertainment World", resembles a port city and is designed to attract the attention of millennials and generation Z users to the 2030 Expo.
In the space of the Busan metaverse, there is a virtual entertainment agency called "X4 Entertainment", founded by Lee Jung Jae, an Emmy Award-winning actor of Squid Games.
Metaverse visitors can become K-pop interns at X4 Entertainment, as well as participate in games and educational content.
The city of Busan, together with Rome and Riyadh, claims the right to host the World Exhibition in 2030. The upcoming exhibition in 2023 will be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The city has been officially designated as a "blockchain-free country zone," and with the help of Binance, FTX and Huobi Global is developing its first city-supported cryptocurrency exchange.
According to the website Zepeto, created by the metaverse subsidiary of the South Korean Internet giant Naver, in March of this year the average monthly audience exceeded 20 million people.
