It's been a mercurial year in the gaming industry with layoffs and closures and mergers. In today's Free Zone, we take a look at three Korean companies as illustrative of the issue. Check it out before leaving your thoughts in the comments.

While I'm like most others in regarding Nexon as Korean, there's a technicality. It's actually headquartered in Japan. Among other things, this means its financial reports are denominated in yen. A couple of weeks ago, the company released numbers for both the last quarter of 2012 and the entire year. As usual, some of them piqued my interest. 

Read more of Richard Aihoshi's The Free Zone: Two Koreans Grow, One Shrinks.