Meta (META) has begun selling its Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta AI smart glasses in South Korea, opening a wearable-computing front on Samsung's home turf months before the Korean champion's own Android XR eyewear arrives. The twist: the glasses run Muse Spark, the Meta AI model whose developer interface Meta has repeatedly failed to ship.
The glasses went on sale in Korea on May 25, 2026, priced from ₩690,000 (about $500), through a partnership with EssilorLuxottica, the Franco-Italian eyewear group behind the Ray-Ban and Oakley brands, according to Seoul Economic Daily and a hands-on report from Chosun Biz. They are sold through department stores, duty-free shops and optical retailers nationwide. Meta Korea, the U.S. company's South Korean unit, showcased the line on June 4 at its Seoul office, per Chosun Biz, which reported the product family has sold more than 9 million units globally between 2023 and 2025.
The reader's question: is the AI behind them even ready?
For a fund manager, the headline raises an immediate doubt about substance versus marketing. The same Muse Spark model that powers voice-and-image features in the Korean glasses is the one Meta keeps withholding from outside developers. Muse Spark launched in April and already runs Meta's consumer AI products, but the developer API has slipped close to two months past chief AI officer Alexandr Wang's promise that it would arrive "soon," The Wall Street Journal reported (via Investing.com and Seeking Alpha). Meta has blamed bugs found in testing and the need to build more infrastructure; the WSJ said that as of this week there was no scheduled launch date. A Meta spokesperson told Reuters the company is testing the API with some early partners and expects to release it this month, per coverage aggregated by The Next Web and Sherwood News.
The consumer experience is uneven by Meta's own demo. Asked to estimate the calories of food on a plate, the glasses replied the dish was a model with no calories — wrong, since only one item was fake — an AI "hallucination" the Chosun Biz reviewer flagged firsthand. Each pair carries a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera and roughly eight hours of battery life, the same report noted. Separately, Meta on June 4 rolled out an AI creator assistant on Facebook that answers questions such as "When should I post?", per TechCrunch — evidence the company is pushing Muse Spark-era features into products faster than it is opening the model to third parties.
Why it matters for Korea: the fight lands before Samsung's counterpunch
Meta's Korean launch is the first concrete sign that the AI-glasses race has reached Samsung Electronics' doorstep ahead of Samsung's own entry. At Google I/O in May 2026, Samsung and Google unveiled "Intelligent Eyewear" running Android XR with Gemini-powered translation, navigation and notification features, designed with two eyewear partners: Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, the Seoul-based premium eyewear brand. Samsung and Google said those glasses launch this fall, per Samsung's global newsroom, Android Authority and Google's official blog.
That sequencing matters. Meta now has a multi-month head start in Korean department stores and duty-free channels — the exact retail surfaces where Gentle Monster is a leading domestic premium brand — before the Samsung-Google-Gentle Monster product reaches shelves. The category's history cuts both ways: Google Glass faltered in 2013 on privacy and form-factor objections, while Meta only revived smart glasses after its 2023 Ray-Ban relaunch turned the product into a volume seller. Whether a Korean-branded, Gemini-powered alternative can blunt Meta's early lead is the open question.
What to watch
Two dated checkpoints will confirm or refute the thesis that Meta is shipping ahead of a working stack. First, whether Meta actually releases the Muse Spark developer API this month, as it told Reuters — a slip would signal the model underpinning the glasses remains constrained. Second, the Samsung-Google Intelligent Eyewear launch "this fall," which will set the price and timing of Korea's home-grown response. Until then, Meta's Korean rollout is a distribution milestone, not a verdict on whether its AI is ready for the platform it is being sold to power.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Figures are sourced from the publications cited inline; currency conversions use an approximate rate of 1 USD = 1,370 KRW.
