This year is one of “unprecedented crisis,” according to SK Telecom’s CEO Ryu Young-sang, in a new-year kick-off staff memo. The country’s largest MNO has led an aggressive AI-focused strategy, carrying on the South Korean telco tradition of generally being first to market – with fiber, with 4G, and with 5G too. However, SKT has been too quick, on the AI front, and Ryu warns while the company has stabilized its traditional telco operations, and laid the groundwork for the ‘AI Pyramid’ strategy, “competition for AI technology supremacy and investment will accelerate.” This has come just a couple of weeks after SKT announced the closure of its Ifland metaverse platform. Launched in 2021, during a pandemic-induced wave of metaverse enthusiasm,…