Korean Billionaire Kim Jung Ju Founder Of Online Gaming Pioneer Nexon
Kim Jung-ju, founder of online gaming giant Nexon, died in February, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. He was 54 years old.“Please excuse us that we cannot explain in detail as all of his family members are devastated,” Kim’s personal holding company, NXC, told South Korean news agency Yonhap. “The deceased had been receiving treatment for depression, and we are sad that it seemed to have worsened recently.”Kim, who also went by the name Jay, is survived by his wife, Yoo Jung-hyun, and their two teenage daughters, Kim Jung-min and Kim Jung-youn. He debuted on the Korea Rich List in 2007 at No. 28 with a net worth of $590 million and joined the billionaire ranks in 2011. In the country’s latest ranking, published in June last year, Kim was No. 3 on the list, right after pharmaceutical tycoon Seo Jung-jin and Samsung’s Jay Y. Lee, with a net worth of $10.9 billion.“It is difficult to express the tragedy of losing our friend and mentor Jay Kim, a man who had an immeasurably positive impact on the world,” Nexon CEO Owen Mahoney said in the statement. “As a founder and visionary leader, Jay encouraged those around him to ignore the skeptics and trust their creative instincts. He will be deeply missed by his Nexon family and many friends.”Kim founded Nexon in 1994 and transformed it into one of Asia’s top videogame companies. Nexon developed the first MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game), The Kingdom of the Winds, in 1996. One of its most famous games is MapleStory, launched in 2003, which has more than 180 million registered users worldwide. MapleStory pioneered the free-to-play model where users play games for free but pay for virtual items and accessories. Nexon moved its headquarters from South Korea to Japan in 2005. It listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2011 in a $1.2 billion initial public offering that was Japan’s largest of the year. Nexon said it listed in Tokyo rather than Seoul because it’s a bigger, more sophisticated market with greater access to international investors. The listing more than doubled Kim’s wealth in a year, from $2.06 billion to $4.3 billion, catapulting him to the No. 3 spot on the Korea Rich List in 2012, up from No. 9 the previous year. Nexon has a market capitalization of $20 billion as of Tuesday's market close. While Nexon is headquartered in Tokyo, NXC, Kim's personal holding company, is based in Jeju, a resort island off the southern coast of the Korean peninsula. Famously media-shy, Kim retired from day-to-day management in 2006. In 2016, Kim was found not guilty of bribery charges after being indicted for giving money to a prosecutor, Jin Kyung-joon, who was a close friend he had met at Seoul National University, in return for favors. While Kim did admit to giving money to Jin, he was acquitted on the lack of evidence that any favors were granted. Kim issued a public apology after the indictment and resigned from Nexon’s board, though he remained chairman of NXC.
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