The main reason Korea Maplestory is more popular than Global Maplestory

Forgive me, but in what world is KMS balanced? What part of this game is "hard work"? Certainly not the RNG tier ups, or the RNG flames. Monotonous grind =/= hard work. And that's ignoring that you can just money-power your way through KMS as well - it's just more expensive.

The reason KMS does better than GMS is very likely solely cultural differences.

Well that cultural diference and the lack of hackers in the server that make the game diferent there, people can't power throught like in GMS to get anything, even if you buy stuff, you pay more or need to rely on the RNG of cubing, it's not easy to progress, and the monotonous grind they do have some progress since even the dailyes from bosses have impact, symbols are another thing that for now, you can't get without using time on the game, and they are very impactful in the bosses of arcane river, aside from the stats gained from it.