Game Culture Advisory Group and Daum Mobage, this week in Korean news

[Gamasutra rounds up the week's biggest reports on South Korea's booming online games market from This Is Game, the leading English-language site about the country's game industry.] In our latest round-up of news from South Korea's online games space, we look at the country's new Game Culture Advisory Group, DeNA launching Daum Mobage, and Gree's recently opened Korean branch. Korean government sets up Game Culture Advisory Group South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism has established the Game Culture Advisory Group, an organization meant to help shape government policies regarding games, and to report their findings on game addiction. Comprising parents, teachers, and other non-game industry members, the group will report to MCST, identifying problems and suggesting improvements based on their experiences playing games, as well as their analysis of game addiction causes. Gree opens Korean branch Japanese mobile social game developer and network Gree has revealed that it opened a branch in Korea last October, which aims to create games for the global market. The office will also work with local services and development partners. Last month, the company announced that it had partnered with 11 developers across China and Korea to help expand its international reach, and release games on its upcoming global Gree Platform. DeNA, Daum launch mobile social game network in Korea DeNA, another Japanese company that runs a mobile social game network, launched its Mobage service in Korea with the help of local portal site company Daum Communication. Called Daum Mobage, the service only supports Android devices so far. Users can access the mobile social game network with their Daum accounts, and pay with their Daum virtual currency. They can also chat with Daum's popular MyPeople messenger service, which currently has some 16 million registered users. Daum and DeNA are offering ngCore, DeNA's Javascript-based game engine, and a software development kit to local developers interested in creating games for the platform. [This story was written with permission using material from ThisIsGame Global, the leading English-language site about the South Korean game industry.]