Three new PSP bundles are bound for Korea, two containing the popular fighting title, Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection. The Tekken bundle is available in with either a white or black system along with the game and a 4GB memory stick. The third bundle, called the DMB Pack, includes a South Korea-specific (Read: Not import friendly) TV tuner and 32MB memory stick and the unit. Wait, a 32MB memory stick? Is that still a thing? Each bundle is priced at 278,000₩ ($218 US).

Oh, and as you would have guessed by the headline of this story, Sony is using a giant PSP with a teaspoon of sexuality to promote the bundles. Makes sense to us!

Epic Games has opened a new subsidiary in Seoul, Korea, with plans to provide licensing services and support resources to development teams using its Unreal Engine. Epic Games Korea will be led by Ray Park, formerly the business and strategy development manager for Microsoft's in-game advertising company, Massive, Inc.

While Epic Games has provided its Unreal Engine to teams in the territory for over five years, Park states the opening of a Korean subsidiary signifies Epic's "desire to collaborate more closely with the [local] game development community." Jay Wilbur, Epic Games' vice president of business development, noted Epic Games Korea would serve as "a hub for Unreal Engine access, knowledge and support in the Korean marketplace."

Rumors of developer Silicon Knights moving to Korea in search of the support it claims to have never received from Epic Games could not be confirmed ... because we made it up for the sake of a bad joke.

Remember Katamari Damacy Online? Yeah, neither do we. A refresher: Katamari Online is a PC iteration of the weird and addicting franchise being published by WindySoft for Korea. First revealed two years ago, 4gamer.net has new details about the game (translated courtesy of andriasang.com). New artwork has been unveiled for the game, featuring two new characters, Mint and Mellow. A new map, Seoul, has been revealed as well. As one might expect, the map features some of Seoul's landmarks.

The story revolves around the King of All Cosmos creating a black hole during a picnic. Naturally, it's the player's job to create a katamari big enough to plug the hole. While not exactly the same, the plot sounds an awful lot like the one used in Beautiful Katamari. It might seem like a small matter but, really, what is a Katamari game without an excellent plot to back it up?

The game is set to have plenty of new modes and features, including a new House system, which we now know allows players to create their own islands using the items collected on their katamaris. The site also mentions the game's Pet system, though no new details have been revealed just yet.

We have to hand it to Justin Wong -- he put up a good fight. Defeating all American contestants in a three-round, GameStop-sponsored Street Fighter IV tournament over the course of the past two months, the NY-based Street Fighter enthusiast can walk tall knowing he took down the best of what America had to offer. What we didn't know when this tournament was announced, however, was that a brief "international title championship" would take place immediately following the battle's end.

After toppling Korea's Poongko, as well as Japan's Iyo, Wong (playing as Rufus) was left to compete with Japan's other entry, Daigo. Daigo apparently swept Wong using Ryu four to zero. Though Wong may not have walked away with the title of "international champion," he did likely need a truck for the Street Fighter IV arcade machine he won and, ya know, that enormous trophy he's holding.

[Image Credit: kineda]

The Wonder Girls are rather popular in Korea, and it looks like Sony is leveraging their celebrity to promote the PS3. The music video for "Now" has the girls seductively turning on the PS3 and wildly moving their bodies to control Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. (Maybe they're using SIXAXIS controls?) The music is a little unbearable, and the video is almost absurd, but it's fun to see PS3 break into other forms of media.

[Thanks, James!]

Korean professional gamer Jae Ho "Moon" Jang has signed a three-year, $486,500 contract to play with WeMade FOX in the Korean gaming leagues. His manager is working on introducing more quality players as there "aren't many first-class players in Korea." Um, if you're, like, really good at Warcraft/StarCraft ... now's the time to start learning Korean.

Best part: Jang isn't even the highest paid professional Korean player, just the highest paid Warcraft player. Top billing goes to his WeMade FOX teammate, Yoon Yeoi "NaDa" Lee, who signed a contract for $521,250 to play StarCraft back in 2007. Wow.

[Via VG247]

Siliconera reports that MBC Game, a Korean television station, is adding a show dedicated to Halo Wars to its lineup. That might sound strange, but the network already airs several programs dedicated to video games. The decision to add Halo Wars to the lineup was probably fairly simple, as the network's StarCraft program is its most popular, according to Siliconera. Details about the show are sparse -- the MBC Game website shows up as malicious on Google, no thanks -- but we assume from the images posted on Siliconera that people will actually play the game on the program.

Televised Brute rushes? Count us in.

A preview of what's on the way for the rest of the world: four months after 3.4, Nintendo has sent out Wii System Menu version 3.5 in Korea. The specific feature changes are as yet unknown, but in terms of security updates, it includes IOS254 code, which, like IOS9, blocks the use of the PatchMii program (a custom update manager tool).

The new menu apparently adds some kind of updates to the Shop Channel, and adds a "Region Select Channel," which the Wiibrew wiki suggests is nowhere near as exciting as it sounds. Until we find out for certain that this somehow blocks new installations of the Homebrew Channel, or removes existing ones, we're going to refrain from panicking. And even in that case, we don't mind waiting a week or so for someone to fix it.

"A lot of our elementary school children have Nintendo [DS]. Why can't our companies develop products like that?" These were the words of South Korean president Lee Myung-bak during his visit to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy. Lee wants to bolster the Korean game industry to rival the success of Nintendo, but local game companies agree that stagnant software support in Korea won't see that happening anytime soon.

It's for that very same reason that GamePark Holdings' GP2X (a Korean-made handheld system which relies on homebrew) isn't exactly flying off the shelves. Without any sort of big-name software like Mario or Zelda included, Mr. Lee's dream won't come true. This is a sentiment shared by Korean developers in every sector – from mobile gaming to internet-based and PC software. If the Korean government could find a way of supporting the software industry better, helping out developers like Pentavision and NCsoft, then maybe Korea might get the ball rolling.

[Via Game Daily]

The Wii has had a tough time in Korea, but the same cannot be said of the DS. The little handheld that could has sold over 2 million units in the region since it launched little over a year ago -- a surprise considering the company only passed the 1 million milestone last month. Keep it up, Koreans. You have excellent taste!

[Via Go Nintendo]

Source - Telecoms Korea (subscription required)

In making up for the lack of full localization efforts, pre-orderers of the Korean version of Dissidia: Final Fantasy will be getting nifty calendars to prop up on their study or work desks. The free calendars feature character portraits drawn by Tetsuya Nomura, as well as Chaos/Cosmos artwork done by Yoshitaka Amano.

As Siliconera points out, these calendars will be slightly obsolete by the time North America gets Dissidia in mid-2009. Hopefully Square Enix has some other bonus material planned for North American gamers.

Following its recent release to Korea, Nintendo has made an official announcement that the console will now also release in Taiwan. On July 12th, gamers will be able to nab a Wii of their very own. And, even better than the Japanese, their console will come bundled with Wii Sports.

Do you think sales will be as poor as Korea?

There's no sign that Koei ever intends to bring its Romance of the Three Kingdoms DS titles stateside -- likely because you didn't buy Opoona -- but it looks like the company will celebrate its 30th anniversary by releasing Romance Of The Three Kingdoms DS 2 in Korea.

Though we're a little upset that we still haven't received the year-old turn-based-strategy game, what really grinds our gears is that Koei is throwing in a themed Nintendo DS Lite hard case with preorders. Where's our preorder incentives, Koei? Just because we don't pirate everything under the sun doesn't mean that we don't deserve to decorate our handhelds with third-century Chinese historical figures?

Although most of Nick Rumas' Gamasutra article on the ubiquity of R4 flashcart piracy in Korea is based on anecdotal evidence, we still found his piece to be pretty fascinating. While DS piracy may not be rampant in the U.S., Korea is renowned as a hotbed of piracy in videogaming, and Rumas claims that as many as three in five DS owners there possess a flashcart -- and we can't see all of those being used for homebrew.

Rumas also tells tales of traders in Seoul's Yongsan Electronics Market openly selling customized R4 flashcarts to customers (who simply pay up their $87 and select the titles they'd like from a master list), and of Korean consumers who are far more clued-up about game piracy than their western equivalents (including middle-aged women, and young children).

He eventually chalks this widespread acceptance of piracy up to more than one factor, including Korea's low minimum wage, an increasingly high cost of living, an apathetic government, and the fact that downloading games without paying for them is simply more of a cultural norm. With the DS now selling in respectable numbers in Korea, we can't imagine Nintendo being overly happy to hear of Korea's piracy endemic, but as Rumas notes, "Regardless of what [government] measures are undertaken, no real dent ever seems to be made."

As if Korean Wii gamers weren't lucky enough, what with all the preorder incentives publishers have been handing out over there, apparently, shops in the East Asian country are selling Wii remotes, nunchuks, and Classic Controllers at hella cheap prices.

Blogger Nuck Rumas shot the photo above of a Korean Lotte Mart's Wii shelf, and, in addition to the Wii system's foreign packaging, you can see some surprisingly low-priced accessories. Wii remotes are marked at ?28,000 (approx. $27) -- compare that to the $40 stores usually charge in the U.S. Of course, compared to Wii remote prices in several other territories, $40 is a bargain, too:

• Japan: ¥3,800 (approx. $36)
• Canada: $44.99 (approx. $44)
• Australia: $69.95 (approx. $67)
• New Zealand: $99.95 (approx. $76)
• Europe: €39 (approx. $61)
• UK: £29.99 (approx. $59)

Also, Classic Controllers and nunchuks in Korea both sell for ?15,000 (approx. $15), compared to the $20 U.S. retailers ask for them. That might not sound like much of a difference, but keep in mind that shops in Korea don't charge an extra sales tax at the register. It all adds up!