If you’re a League of Legends fan, or if you’ve watched some of the game’s contents all over the internet, then you probably know how dominant the Korean teams are in the game. It has reached the point that Koreans are not only playing for Korean teams, but even the North American, European, and Chinese teams had at one point signed a Korean player as an import and had them play for their team. There was even a point where you’ll see a western team with a roster that has the majority of its players coming from Korea. But how did Korea become the best at League of Legends? 

Gaming in Korea

Gaming in Korea had spread even before esports were widely popular. Korea has PC Bangs and arcades built all over cities that enable people to play PC and arcade games at affordable prices. The early presence of gaming outlets in Korea produced a significant amount of their current adult population with at least a couple of days worth of gaming experience.

This made gaming a lot less stigmatized in their country compared to other regions. There is even an arcade called Green Game Land or more commonly known as Green Arcade where almost all of the famous Tekken players have played and trained.

The fabled arcade is decorated with world championship tournament posters and even has a shelf of championship and tournament trophies brought home by the players who frequent the arcade. Needless to say, gaming is well accepted in Korea, and they produce some of the best gamers you’ll ever see.

League of Legends Powerhouse

Korea wasn’t always the champions of League of Legends, of course, like all human beings they also experience defeat. But since joining the game’s competitive scene, they quickly dominated the competition.

Their first notable achievement is back in the Season 2 World Championship in 2012 where they lost to Taipei Assassins in the finals. The following year, South Korea’s League of Legends hit the full throttle as SK Telecom T1 won as champions. This also marked the beginning of South Korea’s 5-year world championship title monopoly, with SK Telecom T1 and Samsung Galaxy both taking their titles. This strengthened their training and desire to nurture homegrown talents.

The beasts of South Korea’s solo queue are scouted and trained rigorously to achieve more international titles. The training process is taken with extreme seriousness up to the point where the players voluntarily choose not to be in relationships and even skip sleep just to get some extra hours of grinding to make it on the main roster.

The excellent quality of ranked games in the region and the intensity of their training even attract teams from other regions to travel to South Korea during their off-season just to play in their ranked queues.

Conclusion

South Korea’s rise to dominate League of Legends didn’t happen overnight. It was an effect of accumulated experience from an earlier generation of gamers. Add the fact that they put in an insane amount of time perfecting their gameplay, their world titles are testaments to greatness made from hard work. If you want to improve your game, just put hours of work into it and check your progress on an LoL MMR checker.