History of Korea's Game Industry: PC Bangs, Online, Mobile, Global
Thirty years of Korean games, from The Kingdom of the Winds and Lineage to StarCraft PC bangs, esports, free-to-play, mobile, PUBG, and console hits.
South Korea is often called an "online gaming powerhouse." But it wasn't always that way. Until the early 1990s, the Korean game market was dominated by consoles and games imported from Japan and the United States, and domestic games weren't very competitive. How did such a country come to build one of the world's earliest graphical online games, create the profession of pro gamer, and take on the global market in mobile and console games?
In this post, we follow the Korean game industry in chronological order. Starting with early PC games, we move through The Kingdom of the Winds and Lineage, StarCraft and PC bangs, esports, free-to-play, the mobile boom that rode on KakaoTalk, the global success of PUBG, and recent console and PC ambitions.
The Starting Point: The Console Market and the First Korean PC Games
In the 1980s, Korea's game market was led by imported consoles. According to English Wikipedia's article on the Korean game industry, Daewoo Electronics released the MSX-based console "Zemmix" in December 1985, and Samsung sold Sega's Master System under the name "Samsung Gam*Boy" from April 1989. Hyundai brought in Nintendo's NES under the name "Comboy."
Domestic game development began in earnest when a law protecting computer program copyrights took effect in July 1987. That same year, Legend of the Sword (Singeom-ui Jeonseol), a role-playing game for the Apple II made by Nam In-hwan, is regarded as Korea's first full-fledged computer game.
In the early 1990s, technology, budgets, and talent were all in short supply, making it hard to compete with imported games. Instead, as PCs spread, PC games using color graphics gradually increased, and this trend led to online games in the mid-1990s.
The Kingdom of the Winds and Lineage: The Dawn of Online Games
The Kingdom of the Winds (1996)
Nexon is a company founded in Seoul in 1996. Nexon's first MMORPG, The Kingdom of the Winds, is based on Kim Jin's manhwa The Kingdom of the Winds and is set against the story of Muhyul, King Daemusin of Goguryeo. Planning began in December 1994, it went through a beta test on December 25, 1995, and official service started on April 5, 1996.
In September 2010, the game entered the Guinness World Records as "the world's first commercial graphical MMORPG," and it is a long-running game still in service today. It was also the first Korean online game to launch overseas. It pursued international expansion early on, with an English version in 1997 and a US commercial launch in 1999 (Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds).
Lineage (1998)
Song Jae-kyung, who designed The Kingdom of the Winds, later created Lineage at NCSoft. NCSoft was founded in March 1997 by Kim Taek-jin, a former developer of the Hangul word processor (Arae-a Hangul). Based on Shin Il-sook's manhwa, Lineage launched in 1998 and was a huge success in Korea and Taiwan. According to English Wikipedia, the Lineage series had gathered 43 million users by 2006, and its 3D sequel Lineage II came out in 2003.
Along with its industrial success, Lineage also sparked social controversy. From the early 2000s, issues such as "gold farms" that traded game money for cash, "hyeonpi" (in-game disputes spilling into real-world fights), and excessive gaming were treated as social problems. You could say the light and shadow of Korean online games first became clearly visible in this game.
StarCraft and PC Bangs: Games Become Neighborhood Culture
Surprisingly, what changed Korean gaming culture in the late 1990s was an American game. Blizzard Entertainment's real-time strategy game StarCraft was released in Korea on April 9, 1998. According to Korean Wikipedia, about 4.5 million copies were sold in Korea alone by the end of January 2009, roughly 40% of worldwide sales.
The space that supported this popularity was the PC bang. The BNC Internet Cafe, which opened in Seocho-dong, Seoul, in 1994, is considered the world's first internet cafe, and the BNC PC Bang that opened near Hongik University in 1995 is regarded as the origin of today's PC bang. After the 1997 Asian financial crisis, people who had taken early retirement rushed to open PC bangs, and StarCraft is credited with helping some 20,000 PC bangs open across the country over the following five years.
PC bangs weren't just places to play games. They had better computers and faster internet than people had at home, and they were social spaces where friends sat side by side and played together. Korean game companies such as Nexon later used PC bangs as a key distribution channel, offering bonus experience points or in-game currency to players who logged in from them.
The Birth of Esports and the Pro Gamer
StarCraft's popularity soon expanded into games people watched. In July 1998, KPGL, Korea's first professional StarCraft league, was held, and in 1999, as the two leagues KPGL and PKO became established, the profession of pro gamer began in earnest.
In 2000, the Korea e-Sports Association was founded to promote and manage esports, and that same year Korea introduced the first pro gamer certification system. Game-focused cable channels such as OnGameNet and MBCGame regularly broadcast StarLeague, and the SKY Proleague 2004 finals in July 2004 drew a crowd of 100,000.
In the 2010s, League of Legends became the new flagship title. More than 40,000 spectators attended the League of Legends World Championship final held in Seoul in 2014. Esports became an official medal event at the 2022 Asian Games, and the experience Korea had built up early on in running leagues, broadcasts, and teams was one of the starting points of this trend.
Free-to-Play: MapleStory and KartRider
Another invention of Korean online games in the 2000s was the business model. Most early online games charged monthly subscription fees, but Nexon was early to adopt the "partial payment" (free-to-play) model, keeping the game free and selling items and cosmetic elements.
| Game | Official launch | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| MapleStory | April 29, 2003 | 2D side-scrolling MMORPG; free-to-play centered on the Cash Shop |
| Crazyracing KartRider | August 18, 2004 | Casual racing; became an esport through the KartRider League |
MapleStory is a leading free MMORPG that made money by selling in-game items instead of charging a monthly fee. According to Wikipedia, as of 2020 it had more than 180 million registered users worldwide and more than $3 billion in cumulative revenue. KartRider was a casual racing game enjoyed by a broad audience thanks to short rounds and easy controls; after its Korean service ended on March 31, 2023, it was succeeded by KartRider: Drift.
Free-to-play lowered the barrier to entry and greatly increased player numbers, and it later became the standard model for online and mobile games worldwide. At the same time, controversy over monetization involving loot boxes (randomized items) grew as well. Regulatory debates around games also intensified, such as the so-called "Shutdown Law," introduced in late 2011, which blocked those under 16 from accessing online games late at night (10 p.m. to 6 a.m.).
The Mobile Shift: Anipang and Kakao Games
As smartphones spread rapidly in the early 2010s, the Korean game industry's center of gravity shifted to mobile. The game that symbolizes this shift is Anipang.
Anipang first appeared as a Flash game on the Cyworld app store in September 2009, and an Android version linked to KakaoTalk was released on July 30, 2012. A one-minute puzzle game in which you clear three or more matching animals, it passed 20 million downloads on October 11, 2012, just 74 days after launch. It was the first game to exceed 20 million downloads from domestic users alone.
Its success is attributed to short play sessions suited to spare moments, score competition with KakaoTalk friends, and a system of sending "hearts" between friends. As the KakaoTalk messenger acted as a game distribution platform, major game companies such as Nexon and Netmarble also jumped into mobile in earnest. In 2016, Netmarble released Lineage 2: Revolution, a mobile MMORPG using the Lineage intellectual property (IP), after which bringing popular PC online game IPs to mobile became a major trend.
PUBG: A Korean Game Reaches No. 1 in the World
In 2017, the Korean game industry reached a new milestone. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, made by a studio under Bluehole (now Krafton), launched in Steam Early Access in March 2017 and became a global hit. The battle royale format, in which up to 100 players drop onto an island and fight until the last person (or team) is left standing, became a mainstream genre thanks to this game.
PUBG was built on a mod created by Brendan Greene and developed into a standalone game by a team led by Kim Chang-han. After its full release in December 2017, it sold more than 75 million copies on PC and consoles, and it became free-to-play in January 2022. On March 19, 2018, PUBG Mobile, made with Tencent's Lightspeed Studios, was released and became a flagship title in the mobile market as well. Bluehole changed its company name to Krafton in November 2018.
PUBG showed that a Korean game company could create a worldwide hit in the global market, including PC packaged games and consoles.
Recent Ambitions: Console and PC Blockbusters
The Korean game industry long focused on online MMORPGs and mobile, and had little presence in the console market. In the 2020s, this is starting to change.
- ***Lies of P* (2023)**: A Soulslike action RPG made by Neowiz that darkly reimagines the story of Pinocchio. It was released in September 2023 on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, and sold more than 3 million copies by June 2025. It was also nominated at several year-end awards, including The Game Awards.
- ***Stellar Blade* (2024)**: An action-adventure game developed by Shift Up, founded by Kim Hyung-tae, and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was released on PlayStation 5 on April 26, 2024, and the PC version launched in June 2025. It likewise sold more than 3 million copies by June 2025.
Both games stand out as packaged games you buy once and play to the end, rather than relying on loot boxes or long-term live-service monetization. You could say Korean game companies are testing new markets on the strength of the graphics and operations expertise they've built up.
Summary: What Korea's Game Industry Has Left Behind
Looking back on more than 30 years of the Korean game industry, a few trends stand out.
- It grew alongside internet infrastructure. High-speed internet and PC bangs became the foundation for online games and esports.
- It created new business models. Free-to-play grew massively in Korea and became the global standard, but it also left the unresolved issue of monetization controversies.
- It quickly rode platform shifts. It has expanded its stage from PC online games to KakaoTalk-based mobile, and again to global PC and console.
Compared with 1996, when The Kingdom of the Winds first launched, Korean games today are far more diverse in both genre and platform. Watching which game will write the next chapter is yet another way to enjoy games.