NEM enters the South Korea scene

NEM was invited to give a presentation at the 9th Asia Leadership Conference in South Korea

The NEM team has established its presence in South Korea after its engagement in FutureBlock, a blockchain event organised by the Asia Leadership Conference (ALC), last May 16–17 in Seoul.

Lance Cheang, Project Director for NEM Southeast Asia (SEA), was one of the keynote speakers and panelists on cryptofinance, tokenomics, and ICOs. The conference was the 9th edition of ALC, hosted by Chosunilbo, one of the major newspapers in South Korea.

NEM Southeast Asia Project Director, Lance Cheang during his talk at the Asian Leadership Conference

Korea’s blockchain industry is exponentially increasing and the initial attendance at ALC allowed NEM to engage and build a contact base with the South Korean startup community, including Foundation X, Accelerate Korea, and Jay Kim, marketing director of Biockchain and a key person in the startup circles in Seoul.

With the efforts of Jeff McDonald, then NEM Vice President (and now Advisor) when he was in South Korea, several partnerships have been made and this new initiative now looks at creating more and put boot-on-the-ground in the country, starting with Seoul. Government and private sectors have great interest in building in the NEM ecosystem.

The NEM SEA team made a follow up visit on June 14–20 to engage and initiate Memorandum of Understandings (MOUs) with 5 organisations in the country (more details on these MOUS will be announced at a later date).

NEM has also made an engagement in the education front, making contact with Yonsei University, one of the top education institutions in South Korea, to discuss NEM’s involvement in its blockchain lab.

Essentially, NEM has 3 focus in South Korea:

1. Partner with leading educational institutions to drive wider awareness for Blockchain and potentially help in building a bigger pool of strong developers
2. Insert NEM into the startup ecosystem to drive adoption of more blockchain use cases and help accelerate growth of such companies
3. Engage the South Korean Government regarding regulations in Blockchain for the country

Multiple initiatives have been made by the South Korean Government when it comes to blockchain. They have announced the investment of US$230M in blockchain technology development by 2022 and are pushing pilot projects and blockchain as a service (BaaS). NEM blockchain, with its scalability, speed, security, and stability, is a perfect fit!

Images taken from the Asian Leadership Conference’s Futureblock site