The CEO Who Wanted His Salary in WEMIX: Chang Hyun-guk's Money Story
In 2022 he was the best-paid executive in Korean games and promised to take his pay in his own token. Two years later he left Wemade, bought into a loss-making studio with his own money and started again. A personal history in numbers.
In February 2022, on Wemade's earnings call, CEO Chang Hyun-guk said something no other Korean listed-company boss had said: once the legal, accounting and tax questions were sorted, he wanted to be paid in WEMIX, the company's own crypto token.
It was the high-water mark of Korea's play-to-earn moment, and Chang was its face. This piece follows the man and his money: what he earned, what he promised, and what he did after leaving Wemade. (The WEMIX corporate saga and his trial are covered in their own articles.)
The best-paid man in Korean games
Wemade's 2021 was transformed by MIR4, whose global version tied in-game resources to the WEMIX token. Chang, who had led the company for roughly a decade, was rewarded accordingly.
Wemade's filings showed that in 2021 he received 6.916 billion won in total pay, made up of a 380 million won salary, a 3.178 billion won bonus and 3.356 billion won in gains from exercising stock options.
In 2022, the number went far higher. His total for the year was 17.292 billion won, which made him the top-paid executive in the Korean games industry, ahead of NCSOFT founder Kim Taek-jin's 12.381 billion won.
The pledge: salary into tokens
In April 2022, Chang turned his earnings-call promise into a plan. On 13 April, a WEMIX notice said that from that month he would use his salary and dividends to buy WEMIX, and that he would not sell any of it until he left Wemade and the WEMIX team. His rewards, the notice said, would be tied to the WEMIX ecosystem reaching its goals.
It was meant as a signal of confidence at a nervous time. Wemade had just been criticised for counting cash raised from selling WEMIX as revenue in its fourth-quarter results; it later restated its 2021 sales and operating profit to strip WEMIX out.
Leaving Wemade
WEMIX was delisted from Korea's major exchanges in late 2022, relisted, and then hit by a hack in 2025, and prosecutors charged Chang over WEMIX disclosures. In March 2024, after about ten years in charge, he stepped back from CEO to vice-chairman. On 15 July 2025, the Seoul Southern District Court found both Chang and Wemade not guilty at first instance, ruling that the capital-markets law covered Wemade's shares but not the WEMIX token (the trial in detail).
Starting again with his own money
The most interesting money move came in December 2024. Actionsquare, a small listed studio, announced a 5 billion won share issue to a single buyer: Chang. He paid 903 won a share, a 10% discount, for 5.54 million shares, or 9.64% of the company, becoming its second-largest shareholder, with a one-year lock-up. At the same time, he returned to the industry as Actionsquare's co-CEO.
The company was renamed Nexus (넥써쓰) and Chang was nominated CEO in January 2025. Its plan centred on CROSS, a new blockchain platform for games, with a CROSS coin listed on Bitget and Binance Alpha. The early numbers were striking: in Q1 2025, revenue jumped about five times to 6.6 billion won and the company booked a 300 million won operating profit, its first after ten years of losses. More than 80% of that revenue came from blockchain services.
WGC's take
Chang Hyun-guk is the clearest Korean example of a blockchain-gaming fortune: real money, much of it earned through bonuses and stock options during the WEMIX rally, followed by legal trouble and a public fall. What sets him apart is the second act. He bet his own money on the same idea in a smaller company. Whether CROSS succeeds where WEMIX struggled is the story to watch in 2027.
Token prices are highly volatile. Nothing in this article is investment advice.