But Kim, who co-founded the studio Pearl Abyss in 2010, is part of a wave of South Korean game makers who are dreaming big. But in the same way that K-pop and K-drama have become lucrative cultural exports for South Korea – a national wave known as “Hallyu” in Korean – perhaps it is now time to speak of K-games. By last year, President Lee Jae Myung was calling video games a “truly authentic export”. Internet cafes, known as PC bangs, spread rapidly as informal social spaces where young people could play video games on high-powered computers. Crimson Desert does not appear to bear many hallmarks of South Korean culture, at least at first glance.

Source: The Star March 29, 2026 13:04 UTC