EPT101 Amusing Things About My Favorite Brood War Players and More From Afreeca…
This is my first post in a long while. Some of you might remember me but most of you probably don’t. A couple years back I used to run a blog about MBCGame HERO. Sadly the team disbanded very suddenly and it became increasingly difficult to continue posting, especially in light of what happened to the professional BW scene in Korea. Since then, some fellow MBC fans that I like haven’t been seen around TL much. Hopefully if they see this, they’ll make a return.
My favorite players are Jangbi, Jaehoon and Light. When Jaehoon and Jangbi started streaming on Afreeca, I began watching their streams daily (sadly Jangbi didn’t stream for long but hopefully he will be back soon). I also like watching the streams of former Team 8 players. So I thought I would share with you some amusing things that's been said by these players. Some of the things I’ve learnt in the past 2 months about a few former pros have certainly surprised me, both in good and bad ways. I'm leaving out the more sensitive issues so this is going to be a largely positive post. It was difficult narrowing it down to 101 things though.
As a tribute to the 7th anniversary of Jaehoon’s official debut as a progamer (he debuted on October 30th 2006 in a teamplay game against Pantech, which he won), most of the tidbits will be about him and his friends. A few of the points have been mentioned before on this blog but most of the information should be new to you. I hope you will find this an interesting read.
My personal comments are in [ ].
1.An Afreeca BJ has many resources at his disposal on his website. One of them is a private list of fans ranked according to the number of balloons they've donated to him. The top 20 list is the yeol hyeol list. Yeol hyeol fans have their own special icon in chatrooms. The yeol hyeol fan list is also visible to anyone who visits the BJ’s website (unless the BJ personally disables that feature) so some fans aspire to be on the list if they have enough money. A yeol hyeol fan can also access the BJ's stream even if it has reached full capacity. The top fan is called the hoe jang (chairman). The hoe jang gets a lot of respect from fans.
2. Shuttle is so good at inducing fans to give him balloons on Afreeca and he’s made so much money that he’s nicknamed “don-joong”. Don = money in Korean.
3. Although he is not THE biggest money earner among SC BJs, to make it into the top 20 on Shuttle's list, you have to have donated at least 25,000 balloons. That’s the highest cut-off mark among all the SC BJs.
4. Shuttle occasionally asks Jaehoon to analyze his replays. He did this once during Jaehoon’s broadcast. And Jaehoon watched the replay almost to the end, only to find Shuttle winning, but Shuttle kept asking him to point out what he did wrong.
5.Jaehoon was having a stressful day once (because of some trolls in his chat room) and Shuttle dropped by say “hyung saranghae” (hyung I love you).
6. Whenever Jaehoon drops by Shuttle’s stream, Shuttle will say “Welcome, Jaehoon hyungnim”, which is a really polite way of greeting.
7. Light hardly loses any TvZs in practice. Back when the BW Proleague was still around, Jaehoon once spent a week living at Woongjin house practicing with Woongjin players. Light didn’t lose a single game against a zerg during that one week. Not one. Not even against Zero.
8.”이재호 완전 괴물이다” (Lee Jaeho is a complete monster) is a phrase Jaehoon has used to describe Light on more than one occasion, owing to Light’s incredible TvZ as well as his towering height.
9. At Samsung, only Jangbi and Roro are good at football. Maybe Reality is not bad too. The rest are all bad at football, Stork included.
10.Hero and Lazy said that among progamers, Jaehoon is one of the best at football (soccer).
11. Jaehoon does not know the stargirls Seo Yeonji or Choi Eunae well but he used to be on familiar terms with one of the previous stargirls (Park Hayoon or was it Park Jihyun? I didn’t quite catch the first name). She once treated him to a meal.
12. Once, when he was a rookie, Jaehoon got scolded badly by a veteran player. When his teammate Moon Junhee found out, he put his arm around Jaehoon to comfort him.
13. Jaehoon says that Pusan is like family to him. He said that in all the years he has known Pusan, Pusan has never shouted at his juniors. He refers to himself as part of the Pusan-line.
14. Jaehoon is also good friends with Effort. About 3 weeks ago, Effort called him up to arrange to have a meal together. After learning that Jaehoon didn’t have much food at home, Effort bought him a bag of fruits.
15. Ruby bought bottles of vitamins for Jaehoon, Jaehoon chews on them during broadcasts. [Vitamin C tablets perhaps?]
16. Jaehoon does not like watching JD vs Flash finals. One reason is because Jaedong keeps 4 droning, which annoys him [LOL]
17. Light’s TvZ is so good because he has zero tension during live matches. Absolutely confident in TvZ.
18. The happiest times for Jaehoon when he was in Team 8 was when the 6 of them- Jaehoon, Jaedong, Movie, Tyson, Sea and By.hero were in the team together. Because all of them are only 1 year apart, they spent a lot of time together. After they all left one by one, things got very difficult and lonely for Jaehoon.
19. In his last 10-12 months in Team 8, Jaehoon said he had to prepare for 95% of their Ace games, which meant that for every match, he had to prepare for 2 games. And after every match, he would return to his hostel and just watch TV alone. He also had his own room so there was no one to talk to. Because of the age difference between the rest of the players, on vacation days, he would spend his time alone too.
20. After the Jinair sponsorship was announced in July, Jaehoon thought he was saved. A Jinair executive even told him “we’ll take good care of you.” But not long after that, they went back on their word and Jaehoon had to retire.
21. Before he started broadcasting on Afreeca, he had very little idea what Afreeca was about so he had to learn many things from scratch. His fans have helped him out a lot. Whenever he’s stuck with a technical problem during a broadcast, he will turn to the fans in his chatroom for help.
22. Jaehoon has great respect for Flash’s mental toughness. He also said that Flash is a prodigy.
23. Back in 2006-2007, Jaehoon used to practice with Flash a lot on Bnet, so they became good friends. But then KT’s practice system changed and Flash stopped practicing on Bnet as much so they grew distant but recently they became closer again after keeping in touch through kakaotalk.
24.After winning 3 2v2 games in the 2006-2007 season play-offs, Jaehoon also topped the team’s internal ranking tournament and subsequently some other bigger teams [not SKT] asked him whether he wanted to transfer to their teams but he rejected them and ended up re-contracting with MBC instead, for only 250,000Won a month. He was really naïve and innocent [personality flaw] and he was just flattered that MBC offered him a salary. Later he found out that Ruby, who wasn’t even on the roster back then, had successfully negotiated for a 1000,000Won a month salary. When he told his mum about it, his mum was really upset. Jaehoon says that till this day he is still really sorry to his mum for having made this mistake.
25. Jaehoon once received a call from a girl (an acquaintance) while he was streaming, asking him out for coffee. She works as a nurse.
26. The only furniture in Jaehoon’s place is a table for his computer, 2 chairs, a clothes rack and 2 mats for sleeping. He has one mug and one bowl in his house.
27. In recent weeks the mug seems to have disappeared because Movie drank water from a bowl when he stayed at Jaehoon’s place.
28. Jaehoon gets visits from his progamer friends quite often. Light, Pure, Ruby, Movie, Hyun, Tiny (former MBC, now retired), Jaedong and Larva have spent time at his place. Tiny, Ruby, Pure, Hyun and Larva actually appeared on camera. Larva and Hyun both played games on his stream.
29. Jaehoon was ranked #2 on the Korean SC2 ladder before he retired.
30. Jaehoon was having coffee with Hiya, Sea and Tyson when he found out he was late for the BJ Starleague Ro16. He had thought that he was playing in the second match when he was actually scheduled for the first match. It seems that there was some miscommunication with the organizers.
31. In October, Jaehoon got hit by a car while he was looking at his mobile phone. It was not serious so he didn’t go to the hospital.
32. You’re prohibited from discussing yeo-cam (basically female BJs who attract viewers mainly by using their looks and figures) in Jaehoon’s chatroom, especially things like their appearance etc. Jaehoon really dislikes that.
33. He has stayed overnight at Khan house in the past, during breaks between seasons. He said January is really nice and that Reality (whom he is good friends with) is really into gaming so much so that he plays games (not SC) on his computer well into the early hours of the morning.
34. Apparently, Stork is not as good in practice but in live matches, he really shows his class and turns it up a notch or two.
35. Jaehoon really likes Fantasy’s style of play. But he says Fantasy is really unlucky in Starleague finals.
36. Jaehoon was watching Pusan’s broadcast one day when Pusan’s mum walked into Pusan’s room and Pusan asked his mum to wave to the camera to say hi to Jaehoon.
37. Jaehoon was having a hard time one day and he called Jangbi to talk to him. Later Jaehoon logged onto Afreeca and Jangbi dropped by to give him 1000++ balloons to show his support. Jangbi then joked: “don’t call me again”.
38. Jaehoon watches Shuttle’s stream often to relieve stress because Shuttle is “really good at cursing”.
39. Sea is quite close to Junsu from JYJ. On the day of his first broadcast, Junsu gave 10,000 balloons to Sea.
40. Jaehoon is acquainted with Junsu too after having played for FC Men, although not that close to him. He was with Junsu at a salon once when A-Pink and B1A4 (kpop groups) dropped by. A Pink and B1A4 did a 90 degree bow to Junsu and Junsu asked Jaehoon which A Pink member he liked, he said none of them.
41. He said that Junsu is a really nice hyung who gives his younger friends hugs when saying goodbye to them.
42. Jaehoon also went to a PC bang once with Kikwang from Beast (kpop group). He’s acquainted with Kikwang and Doojoon as they all played football together on Junsu’s FC Men team.
43. Once, when Jaehoon played with Lee Wan (Kim Tae Hee’s brother) on FC Men, Lee Wan refused to pass him the ball.
44. One strange day during a broadcast, 2 female BJs popped by Jaehoon’s chatroom. He doesn’t know many female BJs so he had no idea who they were. The first one was Hye Yo, who is an LoL player on Afreeca. Then later on a girl called Min Neung popped by. She said she was his fan (as well as a fan of Sea) and showed him her photo and asked him what score (out of 100) he would give her. He was surprised, to say the least.
45. Some days later, Min Neung played few games with Jaehoon and he said that she was not bad for an amateur player (she plays zerg). She later explained that her older cousin is a former progamer (and that Jaehoon knows him too) but she refused to say his name. [I’m not sure if this is true or not but that’s what she said.]
46.Jaehoon once held a BW knowledge quiz for fans and Min Neung knew all the answers.
47. When Jaedong was in Team 8, fangirls used to send him all sorts of presents. Expensive red ginseng, sports gear, football boots, shoes, clothes, food etc. The amount of adoration he received from fangirls was really alarming.
48. Ruby has moved to a new talent agency. At his old agency he once auditioned for a role to appear along-side the popular actor Kim Soo Hyun. Ruby made it to the final round of the auditions but got knocked out.
49. A couple years ago Ruby broke up with his girlfriend of 2 years and called his friends late at night because he was feeling depressed. But the only one to answer was Jaehoon. Jaehoon later took a costly cab ride all the way from Ulsan to meet Ruby (I can’t remember where he was living at that time) and spent some time talking to him. Later Ruby’s manager came and Ruby went off while Jaehoon spent the night at a Jimjilbang before making his way home later in the morning.
50.About 4 years ago, during his blue hair period, Jaehoon had a girlfriend who was a year older than him. On Pepero Day, after his evening match ended, she drove to his hostel (he had no driving license at that time) and they went for a movie date. He gave her chocolates for Pepero Day. That girl is currently in a kpop girl-group that has released an album but is not actively promoting. [I know of one girl-group member whom he is on familiar terms with but I’m not sure if this person is the one he was referring to.]
51. The story of how Light’s Afreeca ID was revealed to Afreeca fans:
In early October, fans in his chatroom told Jaehoon what Light’s smurf ID was on Fish and asked him to play against Light so Jaehoon asked Light for a game. During the in-game chat, Jaehoon asked Light “Jaeho nyah?” And Light went “Nugu seyo?” (Who are you?) So Jaehoon laughed and said, this is definitely Light. Light then paused the game and a few seconds later someone with the ID “scv6256” appeared in Jaehoon’s chatroom and immediately left without a word and Jaehoon said that person was Light. Fans joked “so even Lee Jaeho cheats by watching his opponent’s stream while playing”. Jaehoon later lost the game and there was some friendly banter between the two of them. Jaehoon said that the person he played against was definitely Light and the person who popped into his chatroom and left without a word was also Light. So that was how Jaehoon confirmed Light’s Afreeca ID/address.
52. Light and Jaehoon often tease each other but they’re really quite close. When Light was looking for a place in Seoul, he chose one in Sillim because Jaehoon is staying in Sillim. Ruby also moved to a place in Sillim and the three of them often have meals together.
53. Terror owes Jaehoon 150,000Won. He lost to Jaehoon once in a 1v1 match and then another time in a team battle (Jaehoon/Movie vs Terror/Britney). Terror promised to pay up but never did.
54. Jaehoon met Lee Hongki (FT Island, kpop group) in an elevator when the former was living in Mullae-dong. He said Lee Hongki’s real height is actually around 170cm. (Lee Hong Ki’s official profile states his height as 178cm).
55. Jaehoon is also friends with some of the former members of the kpop group Battle.
56. Jaedong isn’t going to stream on Afreeca (at least not in the near future) but he does have an Afreeca ID, like many of the other ex-pros.
57. Movie stayed over at Jaehoon’s place one night after their shopping trip with Sea at Dongdaemun and they streamed together using Movie’s ID. Some funny things happened. Jaehoon did commentary while Movie played against Mind in a sponsored match and Movie later bought fried chicken to eat together. But they were still full after eating dinner with Sea so they finished less than half of it. Movie later did two handstands after losing a game with fans.
58. By.hero is actually very popular among female fans on Afreeca. He has a very positive image because he rarely ever curses and is rather eloquent.
59. When he first started out, Jaehoon used to stream from 9am to 1am everyday with only 1 break in between. He soon fell sick after streaming for so many hours so he went to the emergency room to get treatment and medication.
60. When WeMade Fox disbanded, the players were forced to move out of their dorm immediately. Some of them had no place to stay in Seoul so they stayed at the MBC dorm for awhile. That’s how Jaehoon became good friends with Pure.
61. One week before it was announced that MBC would be disbanded, the players were assured that that would never happen.
62. Jaehoon’s sister used to hit him when he was young.
She is getting married next year.63. Once, when Ruby was staying at Jaehoon’s house in Ulsan, Ruby met Jaehoon’s sister and impressed her and her boyfriend with his eloquence.
64. Seo Yeonji (stargirl) asked Jaehoon for a game on Fish once (she plays protoss too). She knew his real identity but he didn’t know hers.
65. Jaehoon says Coach Joo Hoon is really great. He seems to like Coach Joo.
66. One day in late September, Sea decided to see what Terror was up to and so he began watching Terror’s stream. But Terror found out Sea was watching him and started cursing him. Sea and Terror then engaged in a non-stop 30 second, simultaneous cursing battle until they both ran out of breath. [crazy it was, crazy]
67. Terror lost to Pusan one day and started cursing Pusan like a madman would. A few days later Pusan crushed the MaChul (Savior + Terror) line in a team battle.
68. During his MBC days, Jaehoon seldom went back to Ulsan for Chuseok. One year, he stayed behind at the team house with Hyun and some others. Coach Ha held a ranking tournament for the players who stayed behind, which Jaehoon won 20-3.
69. The PD at Ongamenet likes Jaehoon so that’s one reason why the youtube tribute video was made. Jaehoon teared up after watching the video.
70. Jaehoon has a little dog back at his house in Ulsan.
71. There’s a Fish user named “ppp” who stalks Jaehoon on Fish server. I’m not sure if you’ve seen him in other player’s FPVODs but he hangs out frequently in Jaehoon’s channel to harass and bash him. Even during games, Jaehoon receives messages from ppp. When he ignores ppp’s messages, ppp comes back as ppp1. So Jaehoon ignored ppp, ppp1, ppp2, ppp3. But ppp came back as ppp6575 so eventually Jaehoon just gave up and learned to live with it.
72. Jaehoon didn’t go home for Chuseok on his 24th birthday last month. Instead, he went home 2 days after his birthday and only stayed for one day there before returning to Seoul to stream.
73. Shinee is supposedly 2.02m tall and 100kg in weight, he used to play ssireum when he was younger. Jaehoon thinks Shinee is a really nice guy.
74. Jaehoon got really upset after he lost a sponsored match to by.hero the day before the SRT Ro16. So he abruptly quit broadcasting early and didn’t begin his broadcast until 6pm the next day. Some fans got worried as Jaehoon usually streams every day without fail. But he later explained that he had stayed up till 4am watching VODs and practicing because he was unhappy with his form. However, he had practiced thinking he was facing Sky only to be told by fans that it was in fact Tyson and that Tyson had told fans in the morning he wasn’t going to play. So Jaehoon thought he would be getting a walkover. But unexpectedly, at the last minute, Movie recommended Britney to Sonic for the match instead, which threw Jaehoon off a little but he hasn’t lost a single game against Britney on Afreeca (20-0) so that last minute change eventually didn’t trouble him.
75. One time, Movie played really badly in a team battle and one fan asked him, “are you Bongjun (Britney)?”
76. Starcue is currently F on Fish, since I last checked 3 days ago. He never seems to ever get to D. If an Afreeca SC BJ plays terribly, fans often refer to his play as “Ji Deu keub” (Starcue class). Ji Deu Set is Starcue’s Afreeca ID.
77. It is well known among fans that Sea turns into a different player (not for the better) after midnight. Once, during his MBC days, Sea tried practicing late into the night but he ended up losing almost all of his games.
78. Some of Jaehoon’s younger Team 8 teammates (the ones still with Jinair Greenwings) have popped into his stream now and then when they should be practicing. Once, one of them came in during practice hours. Jaehoon saw the ID and then quietly kicked him out of the stream. Fans were wondering what happened but then Jaehoon laughed and explained it was his former teammate and it was for his own good because his teammate should be practicing instead of watching Afreeca.
79. Once, while playing a ladder game, Jaehoon misclicked and one dragoon (let’s call him dragoon A) shot at another dragoon (dragoon B). It was just one shot but Jaehoon got “annoyed” and said to dragoon A “why did you hit him?” Then he used B to attack A, just one shot, in order to be “fair”. [LOL]
80. Sometime in late September, Larva had lunch with Jaehoon and then went to his place to hang out for awhile. However, he lost a sponsored match on Jaehoon’s behalf, against Ample. Larva then pretended to cry but Jaehoon thought it was real. After doing some funny sequences for the audience, Larva became tired and fell asleep until dinner time.
81. So Ssak was in Sillim-dong on 20th October and he entered a café, wanting to get some coffee. Guess who was working at that very café? Light. They saw each other and exchanged greetings, awkwardly.
82. Light is a pretty busy person. Besides writing lectures for his blog, he also has a part-time job (the café position), is learning swimming and cooking and has a girlfriend. So Light can’t stream that often, usually on weekends. So far he has said that he doesn’t want to play in tournaments and has refused sponsored matches. Movie offered him a sponsored match but he turned it down.
83. The night before Light first streamed publicly, he had a kakaotalk conversion with Jaehoon.
Light: “Endo ah, I’m bored, shall I give Afreeca a try?”
Jaehoon: “Sure, go ahead.”
Endo (short for n.Die_Jaehoon), is Jaehoon’s nickname. However, only his close friends can call him that.
84. Jaehoon said that he will probably concentrate on streaming for the first year and then maybe take a course to learn a new skill. Some fans suggested that he learn English and that he can learn some from MC. But Jaehoon said, "that's not English, that's Konglish." [LOL]
85. Although Light, Sea and Tyson are all born in 1990, they’re not all considered chingu (people of the same age). Jaehoon is born in 1989 but Light does not address him as hyung, instead they treat each other as chingu because Light, despite having been born in late March, is a fast-90er as he attended school one year early. So Light is considered Tyson’s hyung and Tyson addresses him as such. However, although Sea addresses Jaehoon as hyung, Light is not Sea’s hyung, they are chingu because they are born only 1 day apart. [Confusing? Yes it is. But it’s also amusing.
]86. Jaehoon went to the dermatologist (he had really bad acne) after a 24-hour marathon of streaming about 10 days ago, only to return home in pain. It was so painful he couldn’t sleep. And so he didn’t stream for the day.
87. Conversation between an ardent Tyson (Park Subeom) fan and Jaehoon:
Fan: Ah, Sunggyun (Mind) is not streaming now. I’m in his yeol hyeol list.
Jaehoon: I didn’t know that.
Fan: Do you know how I got on the list
Jaehoon: How?
Fan: Because of Subeom’s sponsored matches. He lost both of them against Sunggyun.
88. Light watches most of the replays of matches he loses. Even if the game is not important. Tyson usually only watches his replays if he wins. [LOL]
89. According to Jaehoon, during practice when Light and Sea play against one another, the game never seems to end. That’s Light’s style, Jaehoon said. Every time they play, get ready for a 1 hour game.
90. Jaehoon was an advanced Baduk player when he was young. He was at 4 Dan before he stopped playing in early middle school. He won numerous tournaments and even represented Ulsan in some tournaments. He has 3 rows of trophies which are in his home in Ulsan. But he never had any intention to become a Baduk pro, he started learning it just to increase his concentration. His goal was to become a professional footballer.
91. Once, during a Baduk tournament, Jaehoon got bored of waiting for his turn as the matches were taking too long. So he went to a PC bang instead, to kill time. When his Baduk academy director found out, he got really pissed.
92. Jaehoon’s two closest friends are Jangbi and Jaedong. [No secret here].
93. About Jaedong:
They are close friends because back in 2005, they traveled together from Ulsan to Seoul to participate in Courage. Jaehoon met him when they were both in high school (different schools in Ulsan). Jaehoon and Jaedong used to represent their respective high school SC teams and once, their teams faced each other in a tournament. Jaehoon lost the Ace set for his team (not against Jaedong, against some other player) and went home straight away.
94. When Jaedong got knocked out of Dreamhack Bucharest in September, the first person he went to visit after his plane touched down in Seoul was Jaehoon (Jaedong’s older brother’s place is not far from Jaehoon’s place). He wanted to know how Jaehoon was doing. They had a meal together and talked about many things. Sometime in October, Jaedong dropped by again at night. He had some things he was agonizing over so he wanted to talked to Jaehoon about them.
95. The fans in his chatroom often ask Jaehoon “what’s Jaedong doing now?” Once, Jaehoon replied, “I’ll call him to find out”. So Jaehoon called JD’s phone but there was no answer. Then someone told him that maybe Jaedong was streaming, so Jaehoon went to look for JD’s Twitch stream but unfortunately he forgot his Facebook password so he couldn’t log into the chatroom to talk to JD. But a few minutes later JD sent him a kakaotalk msg: “y?”
96. About Jangbi: Jangbi and Jaehoon won’t play against each other unless they really have to.
97.Sometime in early September, when Jangbi popped by Jaehoon’s chatroom, a fan asked Jangbi whether the two could play against each other in a sponsored match, Jangbi said he didn’t want to. Jaehoon explained that it was because they are too close. [I think it was meaningful that Jaehoon got his 100th Proleague win after beating Jangbi
]98. During one broadcast, Jaehoon had a breakdown, recalling some depressing memories from his childhood and his career. Jangbi immediately dropped by his chatroom, as did Great. Jangbi also called him on the phone.
99. When asked whether he’s closest to Jangbi or Jaedong, Jaehoon said that he’s closest to Jangbi although they are his two best friends.
100. This is because when they were amateurs, Jangbi and Jaehoon used to practice together online almost every day until 4am.
101. Jaehoon said about Jangbi: “there are no secrets between Jangbi and I.”
Thanks for reading! Have a good day.
