*Arrest of CJ Games CEO shows officials at a lost over illegal game money exchange
By Cho Mu-hyun
For some game-junkies, the virtual world bears more meaning for them than the real world. They will pay staggering amounts of real money for a few penny and dimes of in-game currency. Not surprisingly, sometimes, vice versa.
There are those who exploit this, and authorities trying to contain them: peddlers, brokers, exchange banks of the virtual and the real, like a scene of the movie ``Matrix,’’ but without the black leather tight-fitting jackets, and more importantly, there are real consequences involved here.
On Saturday it was reported that Kwon Young-shik, president of CJ Games, CJ E&M’s online gaming subsidiary, was arrested by the Seoul Northern District Prosecutors’ Office for exchanging game money for real currency worth a market-value of 900 million won (about $793,000) on Wednesday. He was arrested with another lower level CJ employee surnamed Hong, who is reportedly involved in the illegal exchange.
The prosecutors’ office raided CJ E&M Netmarble office on Thursday and is planning to expand the investigations following the testimony of a money exchanger surnamed Lee, who was arrested last month and confessed the involvement of Netmarble employees.
Kwon is charged with exchanging his virtual money for real world currency through Lee during his tenure as director in 2008 of CJ Internet, CJ Games’ predecessor.
“The prosecutors’ office is investigating some of our employees to find out whether they participated in illegal activities along with the currency exchanger arrested on April,” said a Netmarble representative. “We will cooperate with the investigation to utmost.”
Game authorities have tried to contain illegal game money exchange for some time to no avail, and the recent news of a direct involvement of a game company official is hard proof that they are really doing a shabby job about it.
Since the controversial ruling of the Supreme Court on 2010 that saw two gamers who sold in-game items for real money go free, the issue of game money exchange has stayed relevant and underscored the Korean game industry’s boom. The Court decreed that items or money gained in the virtual world were legitimate fruits of a laborers’ work and toils, which drew mixed reactions: parent groups slammed it, but the game industries welcomed it as they saw an opportunity to instigate the skyrocketing market even further, for the benefit of themselves and consumers.
It also spawned believers that now any trade of cyber currency was possible. Albeit the government’s insistence that some forms of game money exchange are prohibited, the trillion wons worth of game money market seemed unaffected.