"Offering Donations Without Receiving Appearance Fees"… LG Uplus, Game Culture Foundation, NHN 'Warm Sharing'

[Asia Economy Reporter Seulgi Na Jo] LG Uplus announced on the 17th that it donated laptops and smart pads for online classes to the ‘Seoul Special City Kkum Namu Village,’ which is entrusted and operated by the Joy Sharing Foundation, together with the Game Culture Foundation and NHN.

The educational equipment donated to ‘Kkum Namu Village’ includes about 60 laptops and 171 smart pads, worth approximately 120 million KRW. This donation was made after Kim Kyung-il, chairman of the Game Culture Foundation who appeared in the ‘U+ Kids Land’ campaign video for proper viewing habits titled ‘What Are Your Children Watching and Listening To?’ released in May, proposed the donation of educational equipment.

Chairman Kim donated his entire appearance fee to support children in facilities struggling with online classes, and LG Uplus decided to provide smart pads to all enrolled students of Kkum Namu Village. The delivered laptops and smart pads will be used for online remote classes for children in care facilities.

NHN also donated laptops for online classes to Kkum Namu Village by matching the amount of Chairman Kim’s appearance fee. With NHN’s participation, the number of supported laptops doubled. LG Electronics will also separately donate operational laptops. Through this donation, 171 elementary, middle, and high school students belonging to Kkum Namu Village will have a stable environment to attend online classes.

At the delivery ceremony held at the auditorium of the Seoul City Kkum Namu Village hosted by Seoul City on the same day, attendees included Park Hyung-il, Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer (External Cooperation) of LG Uplus; Kim Kyung-il, Chairman of the Game Culture Foundation; Jung Woo-jin, CEO of NHN; Song Da-young, Director of Seoul City Women and Family Policy Office; Father Shim Yoo-hwan, Executive Director of Joy Sharing Foundation; and Lee Byung-do, member of the Planning and Economy Committee of the Seoul Metropolitan Council.

Executive Vice President Park said, “As COVID-19 is spreading again, online classes have become not just an alternative to offline classes but a method of instruction,” adding, “LG Uplus will contribute to creating a new opportunity for non-face-to-face education from kindergarteners to elementary, middle, and high school students through various educational contents we possess.”

Chairman Kim said, “Whether children in Kkum Namu Village can freely pursue their dreams without being discouraged by their circumstances depends on how much support our society can provide, which I believe is a measure of our society’s maturity,” and added, “I hope this donation will be a small trigger for more interest and support from all walks of life.”

CEO Jung said, “The unexpected crisis of COVID-19 has brought rapid changes in our society such as the expansion of online education, but the actual educational field struggles to respond due to a lack of IT devices,” and stated, “As an IT and edutech company, NHN plans to continuously take interest and provide support to improve the IT education environment for our future dream trees.”

Father Shim Yoo-hwan, Executive Director of Joy Sharing Foundation, expressed gratitude, saying, “Although smartphones and PCs are widely distributed, there are still students in IT device blind spots, and we appreciate the help given to these vulnerable areas.”

Previously, the campaign video ‘What Are Your Children Watching and Listening To?,’ which was the first in Korea to implement an AI child and unfilteredly showed the impact of indiscriminate video content viewing on language habits, recorded 7.5 million views on YouTube and caused a social stir.