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Alibaba’s cloud services wing today announced it’s expanding into South Korea. It will start by helping Korean companies set up web hosting in China.

Amazon Web Services, the American company’s equivalent to Alibaba Cloud, launched in Korea in January.

“This is the first batch of our Asia strategy,” Alibaba Cloud vice president Yu Sicheng tells Tech in Asia.

Last year, Alibaba announced a plan to spend US$1 billion establishing its cloud services in new markets. It launched its first American data center last March, and has also expanded to Hong Kong and Singapore. Now it’s eyeing markets like Japan and the Middle East.

“I think Korea [has] big growth potential for gaming and animation,” Sicheng says. If that kind of high-bandwidth activity could be hosted within China, users could experience faster load times and smoother performance.

Alibaba Cloud has partnered with SK Holding C&C, a Korean IT firm, to secure the deal.

Navigating Chinese regulations

Alibaba isn’t setting up data centers in Korea just yet, as it has done in places like Singapore. At first, it will focus on persuading Korean companies to set up shop within China.

“We have a very strong presence in China. We have data centers in Beijing, Qingdao, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Shenzhen,” Sicheng says. Hosting within China will give Korean companies speedy access to a tremendous number of Chinese users, and it will also help them pull off an even trickier feat: dealing with China’s internet regulations.

Korea has big growth potential for gaming and animation.

Foreign internet companies that hold Chinese citizens’ data are required by law to physically store that data on servers within the People’s Republic. This can be burdensome for companies that don’t have the resources to set up their own server farms abroad, and navigating the world of Chinese hosting sites can be difficult.

Korean businesses and startups will access Alibaba Cloud’s offerings through a localized, Korean-language portal designed by its local partner.

If all goes well, maybe Alibaba Cloud will use this Korean connection to do what it does best: predict the winners of TV singning competitions.