In Korea Starcraft is like baseball in America.  A huge audience , multiple professional leagues, and most everyone has or does play it.  Its just part of the culture.  We were lucky enough not only to see a couple professional matches while we were there but to interview the best eSports player of all time – Lim Yo-Hwan aka “SlayerS_`BoxeR`” aka “The Emperor”.

BoxeR as he is more commonly known makes over $300,000 USD a year to play and has endorsements that bring in around an additional $90,000 each year.  That’s right.  Almost a half million dollars a year to play video games.  Oh, he also has a 500,00 person fan club, most of which is female.

Live eSports match. Feel the intensity.

In Korea there are actually two e-sports channels and at any time of the day you can flip on the TV and watch televised Starcraft matches complete with three different announcers providing commentary.  It’s so popular that lots of bars will turn on all of the TVs to cover the big match of the week.  Oh, and it doesn’t stop there.

Fans wait for the match to get underway.

This is one of the eSports arena where they film the live matches.  If you show up early entrance is free and they’re always excited to have foreigners in the audience.  The atmosphere is almost like a surreal WWF wresting match, but with clicking instead of body slams.

To try and put this in perspective, competitive Starcraft is so popular that most of the largest companies in Korea have their own teams.  This includes Samsung, Hite (the #1 beer in Korea), SK Telecom, and even the Air Force.  Yep, that’s right.  The Korean Air Force has its own Starcraft team.

SK Telecom mascot gets the crowd fired up.

Oh yeah, they also have mascots.

And the prevalence of Starcraft just keeps going.  Seoul in particular has a number of short stay hotels.  And in these hotels they provide not just the normal amenities, but computers so you and your companion can play games of Starcraft after you get tired of uh, resting.  They also usually have giant TVs so you can both watch and play at the same time.  If you know, that’s what you’re into.

You are never far from a game of Starcraft in Seoul.

Our last souvenirs from Seoul.

We got taken out to the 700 Yacht Club (Seoul’s only yacht club) as part of a project we are doing with the Seoul Tourism Organization.  The people there were great and not only took us sailing on the river all afternoon, they cooked us a lunch as well.  Its a great place to go if you live in Seoul and are looking to do some sailing (membership required).

More pictures beyond…

The whole gang and our new friend Martin hanging out on the front on the boat.

A few friend!  This guy was hanging out on the boat and seemed to like people a lot.  I think we spent more time excited about the frog than anything else.

Club deck.  I have plastic furniture on my deck, they have leather couches.

Lunch (tasty tasty noodles).

Thanks to our friends Michael at the Seoul Tourism Office and Don from Urban Events we attended Absolut at Hive in Itaewon for a PR magazine event.  All your favorites (Yuyu, Derek, and Bryan) were there and more importantly so was an open bar.  A good time and numerous cocktails were had by all.

Open barrrrrrrrrrrrrr.  In our defense they were closing the open bar and we had to make it count. 

And a few pics more beyond…

The bar – you could say it was absolutly open.  Hah.

The dance floor.  The DJ was a bit heavy for the event, but still a good time.

Dudes in suits gettin’ their dance on.

All in all it was a pretty chill time to hang out an meet new people.  I’m up for it whenever Absolut wants to throw another one of these.

The reflection from the flash alone was blinding.

Its not a shoeshine machine, its a shoeshine robot.

Seriously Spiderman.  Not cool.

Its floppy disks with pictures of birds on them in a subway station.  I’m pretty sure that’s art.