Kim, Yoon deny marriage rumor

Marriage rumors concerning two of Korea’s IT moguls that heated up cyberspace last weekend were denied by the companies they belong to.
The names of 40-year-old Kim Taek-jin, founder and chief executive of NCsoft Corp., a top game developer known for its Lineage online role-playing game, and 32-year-old Yoon Song-yee, an executive director of SK Telecom Co., were the most frequently searched keywords on online search engines such as Naver from Saturday.
The searches followed a Friday report by a Korean newspaper that the two would tie the knot at a luxury hotel on Jeju Island on June 25. Even before the news came out, informal newsletters circulating through securities firms ran the same news.
But both NCsoft and SK Telecom rushed to issue separate press releases denying the report. “Kim Taek-jin and Yoon Song-yee have never discussed getting married,” said a statement from NCsoft.
The two executives have been at the center of media attention for a long time. Kim, who established NCsoft as a small start-up with colleagues in 1997, owns 300-billion won ($323 million) worth of stocks. He earned a Ph.D. in computer science from Seoul National University.
Yoon, who earned a Ph.D. from the department of brain and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the age of 24, became the youngest-ever executive of SK Telecom, Korea’s top mobile service carrier, at age 29.

By Seo Ji-eun Staff Writer [spring@joongang.co.kr]