Korean blockchain projects are jumping into the competition for the up-and-coming Vietnamese blockchain market, reports Korean tech news website Etnews.

The Korean SNS platform provider NEEOApps has opened Exvina, the very first Korean-built global cryptocurrency exchange with a VND market.

Meanwhile, the Super Alki Foundation, the Korean project that runs blockchain-based fintech platform Finple, is beginning a full-scale move into Vietnam after winning itself some strategic investment from the Vietnamese blockchain investment body Vin Crypto. According to the head of the foundation, they will begin by introducing a payment solution tailored to the Vietnamese market. From there, they plan to aggressively expand into the Southeast Asian market.

Another local blockchain company, Sigmachain, has formed a partnership with Vietnamese marketing company Shimex Media to promote local blockchain businesses. Shimex will handle the local marketing, promoting, networking and exchange listing for Sigmachain’s total blockchain platform project Futurpia.

Just how important is the Vietnamese market? Well, according to Etnews, Vietnam follows just the United States, China, Russia, Korea and Japan in terms of cryptocurrency investment and numbers of transactions. And as Forbes pointed out last year, Vietnam has the talent and the socioeconomic needs to turn itself into a blockchain powerhouse.

Also in the Korean blockchain space…

(By Shin Yong-su, Hanguk Blockchain News, Oct. 10)

The 2020 edition of Hancom Office, the preferred office suite of almost every Korean government body and many a Korean company (as anyone who has received a .hwp file can tell you), incorporates AI, cloud and blockchain technology. In particular, it uses the Hancom SLedger blockchain platform to verify the authenticity of documents and to keep more trustworthy records of changes made to said documents.

(By Joseph Young, Cointelegraph, Oct. 13)

South Korea’s Bitcoin prices show a slight premium of less than 0.25 percent. “While South Korea remains a relatively small market in comparison to Japan, the U.S. and Hong Kong, the prohibition on foreigners trading cryptocurrencies has eliminated a large portion of the demand for cryptocurrencies,” it writes. “In the 2017 bull market, the majority of large-scale trades in the South Korean market are said to have come from Japanese and Chinese investors and miners, decreasing the supply of exchanges.”

(By Robert Stevens, Decrypt, Oct. 9)

Communication company KT is joining hands with blockchain company B-Square Lab to develop a blockchain platform to ensure that halal food is actually halal. The Korean Muslim Federation estimates the global market for halal food at USD 3.64 trillion.

(By Kim Eun-jin, BusinessKorea, Oct. 10)

Forrester, a global information technology advisory group, has apparently named Samsung SDS as Korea’s representative blockchain company. And they have been busy.

(By Vasilios Filip, Cryptocurrency Guide, Oct. 9)

Cryptocurrency Guide lists the highlights of Korea Blockchain Week 2019, including Terra’s move into the Korean market, Vitalik Buterin and Silvio Micali, Hdac and Mike Novogratz’s discussion of the altcoin market.

(By Osato Avan-Nomayo, Cointelegraph, Oct. 12)

Cointelegraph looks at efforts to create self-regulated organizations in the blockchain space to achieve “some standardization in digital currency governance.” Among the earliest examples of this was the Korea Blockchain Association’s rules for self-regulation of cryptocurrency exchanges focusing on AML and KYC. As Cointelegraph points out, however, self-policing measures could strike some as little more than an elaborate exercise in “guessing legality.”