Excerpted from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism's "2022 Character Industry White Paper." Korea's two online/mobile giants, Naver and Kakao, are focusing on developing NFTs using their content intellectual property (IP) — characters, webtoons, emoticons. Naver subsidiary LINE Tech Plus launched NFTs of LINE FRIENDS characters Sally, Connie, and Brown in August 2021, and developed 12 ZEPETO World cherry blossom garden character NFTs in November 2021. Kakao, through a partnership between Kakao Entertainment and Netmarble, developed a metaverse-based virtual influencer and launched character NFTs based on Kakao Webtoon IPs "Solo Leveling" and "Duchess with an Empty Soul" — sharing NFT sales revenue with webtoon creators as a new revenue model. Lotte Home Shopping's "Bellygom" character (1.2M SNS followers, 40%+ overseas YouTube viewership, estimated ~100 billion won valuation) opened the first NFT shop in a mobile shopping app in the retail industry, launching NFT products using both Bellygom and virtual influencer Rozy characters. The industry trend: character IP evolving beyond simple merchandise licensing into core businesses combining virtual influencers, NFT issuance, and e-commerce — targeting not only Gen MZ (10s-20s) but also 30s-40s parents through character/NFT marketing to improve brand recognition across demographics.