From bukae to robots

2020 — the invention of the bukae

Galaxy Corporation is not an entertainment agency that pivoted to robots. It sparked the bukae (alter-ego character) syndrome in 2020, debuted celebrity avatars in the metaverse, and put robots on stage by 2026 — and through all of it, the company has done exactly one thing: give IP a new body. The bukae was a body with a new name, the avatar was a body on a screen, and the Physical AI robot is a body that has walked out into the real world.

Mommy Son, a rapper behind a mask, posed the question — if I am not my 'main character,' who am I?

In 2020, Galaxy Corporation produced 'Bukae Contest' (an alter-ego audition show billed as a 'main-character destruction show'), with Mommy Son at the front. The format — singers, comedians and streamers competing as their alter-ego characters — became one of the starting points of the 'bukae syndrome' in Korean pop culture.

The essence of the bukae is structure, not play. One person's IP does not have to be bound to one person's identity — a proposition that became the starting point of everything Galaxy has done since.

From bukae to avatar — a body on a screen

If the bukae was a body with a new name, the next step was a body with no physical form at all.

Galaxy Corporation co-produced the TV Chosun show 'Golden Age of Bukae,' debuting celebrities' alter-ego IP as metaverse avatars, and beamed virtual-avatar content featuring Mommy Son, Wonstein and San E across the K-pop Square billboard at COEX in Samseong-dong, Seoul. Through broadcast formats and large-scale outdoor media, the avatar was proven to be not an experiment but an operable IP business.

"A Hallyu Marvel" — the ambition of a universe

In January 2022, CEO Choi Yong-ho put it this way in an interview.

"I want to build Korea's first Hallyu Marvel. Overseas there are plenty of hundred-year companies — Marvel in the U.S., One Piece in Japan — but Korea doesn't have one yet."

Just as Marvel extends its characters into film, television and games, Galaxy declared itself a 'story-living' company extending artist IP into bukae, avatars and story universes. Signing G-DRAGON in 2023 was the inflection point of that strategy — if a top-tier artist's IP could be extended into multiple bodies, the model becomes an industry. And it was proven in practice on the Übermensch world tour, through de-aging, drones, AI avatars and a transmission into space.

From avatar to robot — a body that walked into the real world

A body on a screen has limits. An avatar cannot stand on a stage, and it cannot meet an audience's eyes in the same room.

Physical AI erases that final boundary. Galaxy building robot idols, dressing robots in style through MACH33, and making K-pop robot shows a permanent fixture at Galaxy Robot Park — all of it is the next step of the same strategy proven with bukae and avatars. The robot is not Galaxy's new business; it is the final evolution of the bukae.

The origin of hyper-convergent IP

The hyper-convergent IP ecosystem Galaxy talks about — a structure in which one IP exists simultaneously in several bodies: real, virtual, AI avatar and robot — is not a concept coined in 2026. It is the result of six years of adding one form of body at a time, starting with a masked rapper's question in 2020.

Which is why the answer to "why is an entertainment company suddenly doing robots?" is simple. It is not sudden. From the beginning, this company's business has been giving IP new bodies.

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