Wemade Vice Chairman Jang Hyun-guk, Parting Ways with the Company...? Sells All Shares

Purchase of WEMIX Suspended After CEO Resignation

Jang Hyun-guk, CEO of Wemade, is giving an interview at Wemade headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province on the 3rd. / Seongnam - Photo by Kang Jin-hyung aymsdream@

Jang Hyun-guk, Vice Chairman of Wemade, has sold all of his 1.08% stake in Wemade. Additionally, it has been confirmed that he has stopped purchasing WEMIX, which he had been buying monthly, leading to analysis that he may be effectively preparing to leave the company.

According to Wemade on the 23rd, Vice Chairman Jang sold 363,534 shares of Wemade stock over two days, from the 17th to the 18th. The disposal price of the shares was approximately 15.477 billion KRW.

Wemade stated, "It is a simple share sale, and there is no change in his position," but industry insiders speculate that Vice Chairman Jang may be preparing to leave the company. It is generally common for someone at the vice chairman level to purchase company shares to demonstrate responsible management, but he is showing the opposite behavior.

Vice Chairman Jang has also stopped purchasing WEMIX. Since April 2022, he had been buying WEMIX every month using his salary and Wemade dividend payments to show his commitment to the development of the WEMIX ecosystem and responsible management. However, since stepping down as CEO, he has ceased purchasing WEMIX. To date, he has purchased a total of 998,779 WEMIX tokens, worth about 1.5 billion KRW.

Jang joined Wemade in 2013 and served as CEO from 2014, laying the foundation for Wemade to become a leading blockchain game company in Korea. He transformed WEMIX, which was originally based on Klaytn, from a "token" to its own mainnet and strengthened the WEMIX ecosystem. He expanded the blockchain business by onboarding numerous games onto the blockchain game platform "WEMIX Play," which Wemade owns.

However, despite these efforts, the company's performance was poor. After recording an operating loss of 80.6 billion KRW in 2022, the company posted an operating deficit of 112.5 billion KRW last year. The once-thriving blockchain business faced a crisis due to legal risks. Prosecutors summoned Wemade-related personnel for investigation regarding allegations of fraud in the issuance volume of WEMIX virtual assets, and Wemade has yet to be cleared of the accusations stemming from the 2022 controversy over WEMIX's circulation volume.

As the crisis continued, founder Park Kwan-ho returned as CEO after 12 years, and with moves to downsize blockchain-related businesses, Vice Chairman Jang's position became increasingly precarious.

Wemade is reportedly in the process of divesting shares in its blockchain subsidiary Lightscale, and the "WAIT (Wemix Approves Investment Transparently)" protocol investment review committee, which verified the transparency of WEMIX investments and marketing activities, has been disbanded. Vice Chairman Jang was the chairman of this investment review committee.

A Wemade official stated, "Vice Chairman Jang holds 822,572 stock options and is still supporting management closely alongside Chairman Park," adding, "It is not yet time to discuss his position."