[iNews24 reporter Moon Young-su] Nexon (co-CEOs Kang Dae-hyun and Kim Jung-wook) announced on the 20th that it has opened the third Maple Leaf Playground at Seoul Children’s Grand Park to promote children’s right to play and improve their health.
The third playground project is located inside Seoul Children’s Grand Park in Gwangjin District. To deliver high-quality play experiences and highlight the benefits and importance of play, Nexon transformed an aging park playground into a special space shaped by children’s ideas and feedback.
Because the park draws many families, Nexon aimed to create a space where “anyone can play enough, for a long time, and have fun.” The company outfitted the roughly 750 pyeong playground site (about 26,700 sq ft / 0.61 acres) with plenty of equipment: the Pink Bean World composite play structure, which rises about 9 m (roughly 29.5 ft), plus five slides, four swings, and five trampolines. At the center of the playground, Nexon added a shaded bench area called the Maple Leaf Rest so parents visiting with kids can relax comfortably.
The project actively incorporated ideas from a child advisory group called the Maple Leaf Heroes. Nexon Space, the company’s space-asset management subsidiary (CEO Ji Jun-suk), Seoul Children’s Grand Park staff, and other experts joined the design process to raise the project’s quality. Seoul Facilities Corporation will handle operation and maintenance to keep the play environment safe and comfortable.
The children from the Maple Leaf Heroes who helped design the playground rated it 9.1 out of 10, and overall satisfaction was 76 percentage points higher than nearby neighborhood playgrounds. Kids responded enthusiastically: 88.2% said the playground has more fun and new equipment, 70.6% said the characters make it feel special, and 64.7% said children of different ages can all play together. The share of children who said they wanted to play for more than an hour was three times higher than at neighborhood playgrounds, and the playground scored especially well for fostering creative play and a spirit of challenge.
“We wanted to capture children’s voices and imagination and create a place that gives families happy memories,” said Kim Chang-seop, MapleStory’s domestic director at Nexon. “We’ll keep working so the positive impact we create with MapleStory heroes reaches even more children.”
The Maple Leaf Playground is a social contribution project by Nexon MapleStory and the Nexon Foundation that remodels rundown public playgrounds or builds new ones in areas lacking play facilities, so children can run, imagine, and grow in safe, joyful spaces.
Following the first playground in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, in December 2024, Nexon opened the second Maple Leaf Playground in Uijeongbu in April last year. The second playground later earned recognition as an Excellent Children’s Play Facility from the Ministry of the Interior and Safety in 2025, demonstrating the value of “providing engaging play experiences through game IP–based production.”
