Introduction
In April 2022, the former CEO of Reddit, Yishan Wong, tweeted, “The internet is not a “frontier” where people can go “to be free,” it’s where the entire world is now, and every culture war is being fought on it. It’s the MAIN battlefield for our culture wars.”1 Wong’s remarks call attention to the importance and ever-changing nature of the Internet itself. From Web 1.0 to Web 4.0, many things have already changed in Internet usage. As Wong notes, the platform was once the space for freedom of speech; now it is a battlefield for exporting culture. Thanks to the uploads of some major cities, the culture wars have expanded their frontiers into the Metaverse. Seoul, South Korea, for example, enjoys a leading position in the race to become digital; as a result, people can virtually visit the uploaded ‘Metaverse Soeul’ –even ‘live’ there virtually, make purchases, and fall in love with Korean culture. Hallyu, the Korean Wave, is preparing to surpass millions digitally in sales volumes driven by Metaverse-enabled content.
