EPT
Exchange to Korea
Don't know if I posted this before, but I've been accepted to go on student exchange to Korea University for two semesters. I'll be flying out in late August and coming back to Australia sometime in July.
This is going to be a much more prepared trip to Korea than last time. When I went in July 2012, it was simply out of the blue - the last OSL was announced, it coincided with my semester break and I had savings in my bank account.
Unfortunately, I spoke rudimentary Korean and felt that I couldn't do as much as I wanted to when I was in Korea.
Now, I've gotten two years of Korean under my belt (although since I stopped doing courses for it at the start of the year it's pretty piss poor right now) and more time to spend in Korea, I feel there's way more I can do over there besides e-Sports related activities.
I recently purchased a M43 camera (Olympus OMD E-M10) with the intention of going around Korea doing photography, so hopefully that will get me off my ass.
I'm also planning to go to Japan to meet up with my friends who are coming up from Australia for their summer/winter break and (try) to see many of the TL veterans located in Japan (like Mani). Oh, and maybe catch the millions of Japanese music concerts and gigs that happen around that time.
e-Sports 'Research'
Well, not really research per se, but I was invited by one of my lecturers to present for an hour or so on 'gaming in East Asia' for one of her undergraduate classes she is teaching.
Obviously since Brood War history is my bread and butter, I'm effectively going to be talking for an hour on the history of the Korean BW scene. How awesome is that?
Here is the little abstract I've written for it.
+ Show Spoiler +
In 1998, South Korea was faced with the task of rebuilding the economy after the Asian Financial Crisis. Through government investment into the ICT sector and a desire to modernise the manufacturing industry, South Korea was able to climb out the financial pitfall it had been dragged into. Indeed, an industry which was created from the effects of the Asian Financial Crisis was that of electronic sports - e-Sports, which has become a unique part of South Korea's culture.
In this presentation, I will briefly discuss how to define e-Sports in an academic sense before moving on to providing a historical overview of both the growth and decline of e-Sports in South Korea over the past fifteen years, with a predominant focus on the video game, Starcraft. The presentation will be interjected with videos such as documentaries and tournament clips related to the Korean e-Sports industry. There will be a focus on e-Sports figures which have effected the industry, such as Guillaume Patry, Lim Yo-hwan, Ma Jae-yoon and the Taekbangleessang quadrumvirate and some of the significant events which had arisen during the Starcraft era of Korean e-Sports such as the broadcasting rights incident (2007) and the match fixing scandal (2010). The presentation will conclude by looking towards the challenges Korean e-Sports faces in the modern era.
In this presentation, I will briefly discuss how to define e-Sports in an academic sense before moving on to providing a historical overview of both the growth and decline of e-Sports in South Korea over the past fifteen years, with a predominant focus on the video game, Starcraft. The presentation will be interjected with videos such as documentaries and tournament clips related to the Korean e-Sports industry. There will be a focus on e-Sports figures which have effected the industry, such as Guillaume Patry, Lim Yo-hwan, Ma Jae-yoon and the Taekbangleessang quadrumvirate and some of the significant events which had arisen during the Starcraft era of Korean e-Sports such as the broadcasting rights incident (2007) and the match fixing scandal (2010). The presentation will conclude by looking towards the challenges Korean e-Sports faces in the modern era.
I will be doing this in a couple of weeks time. If I get a recording, I will definitely share it.
This is an opportunity that I'm very excited about. On the other hand, I really don't want to fuck it up. Wish me luck.
