Nexon founder Jung-Ju Kim passes away at 54

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
March 1, 2022
Updated June 19, 2025
3 min

Jung-Ju “JJ” Kim, the founder of online game publisher Nexon, passed away at age 54. Nexon announced that he passed away in Hawaii on February 28.

Nexon did not provide a cause of death, but it noted that he had been undergoing treatment for depression and the symptoms had gotten worse of late, according to the Korea Herald.

Min Kim, a former Nexon leader who helped bring Nexon to the U.S., said in a social post that “JJ” had a unique personality. Though Nexon made him wealthy, Jung-Ju handled routine tasks like paining his small apartment in New York City, Kim said.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.