The article titled "Border Wars: The StarCraft II Pro Scene" has hit IGN.com today.
Excerpt
"HuK's win was not just his own that day. For many, HuK's victory at Dreamhack was an indicator that the western world was keeping up. Months had passed since a foreigner had won a StarCraft tournament with South Korean participants, and HuK had come through in a pinch when morale amongst foreign fans was starting to diminish. As a result, the fanfare was through the roof. The fervor of the 80,000 StarCraft II fans that watched live was hard to ignore. Twitter was ablaze with expected congratulations and post game comments from fans, Reddit's Starcraft page had HuK's face splattered all over the front page, and TeamLiquid's Dreamhack post was growing by about two pages every minute. Everyone was spilling their hearts and sharing their love, for we had finally proven that foreign players could hang with the South Koreans.
Kind-of-sort-of? Maybe?
Read the rest of the article, which discusses other foreigners and Koreans like IdrA, Jinro, and SeleCT here: Click Here!
Are wins from foreigners who have spent time training or living in Korea really able to be attributed to foreigners, or are they just another testament to the Korean methods of training?
Huk doesn't count as a foreigner at all in my opinion unless you go purely by genetics. He has literally been training the korean way for months and his success is indicative of korean training.
Oh lord. I'll just summarize the hundreds of posts about to ensue. Half will say that he was not born in korea, was raised outside of korea, and became a pro before going to korea so therefore he is not korean. The other half say that he's only where he's at now because of Korean training, not his own training before he went, and therefore should be counted as a Korean.
The answer people is both. He only was able to go to korea because he was already very good. But there's no doubt that his training in Korea has made him a much better player. Huk has amazing work ethic, combine that with the korean training and you have one of the worlds best players.
God, not this conversation again... Thank you for bringing this up again it always leads to the most fascinating discussions and seldom leads to petty arguments.
Its called submersion. If I go to Mexico and just live there in a house with people speaking spanish all day, im going to learn the language eventually, but my heritage is not ever going to become Mexican. Maybe my kids could call themselves Mexican, but you can't change your heritage within one generation.
I really don't understand this argument at all...... HuK is a foriegner, he is from Canada. I don't give a rats ass how many hours he trains or who he trains with. Nationality has nothing to do with your training regime or where you are currently, temporarily living. ><
There's almost no foreigner who like to train like koreans do. Hell, even somes koreans can't handle the korean training.
Most foreigner are having fun with SC2, the hardcore koreans are just going soulless into practice. Th western world will never go that far into it, it's not in our culture at all.
On July 02 2011 08:42 nalgene wrote: He's more Korean than he is Aryan and if you look at select ( he's more americanized/plays in NA than a true korean )
He lives and trains with them anyways with similar practice schedules
On July 02 2011 08:41 alepov wrote: The western world isn't keeping up, that's the thing. Western players can keep up, if they train in the Korean world.
If western players were to train in the korean WAY, they could keep up just as well in pro houses outside of Korea. It's just the amount of time spent on the game really - someone who is living in a house, playing 6 hours a day, and talking strategy/viewing replays with other players/with a coach all day long is just going to be better at the game. The more you put in, the more you get out.
On July 02 2011 08:44 aMped wrote: I really don't understand this argument at all...... HuK is a foriegner, he is from Canada. I don't give a rats ass how many hours he trains or who he trains with. Nationality has nothing to do with your training regime or where you are currently, temporarily living. ><
No one honestly believed that the Koreans were genetically superior unless they were a gaming fascist. The whole debate is a culture debate.
On July 02 2011 08:43 Jayrod wrote: God, not this conversation again... Thank you for bringing this up again it always leads to the most fascinating discussions and seldom leads to petty arguments.
Its called submersion. If I go to Mexico and just live there in a house with people speaking spanish all day, im going to learn the language eventually, but im not going to turn Mexican.
This, a thousand times this. It is from him training hard against good players.
Kind of weird you'd use "foreigner" on IGN.com. It's a nice slang for THESE forums, but using "foreigner" with a general audience is going to confuse the shit out of people.
Also, the "Korean training", reminds me of this Japanese figure skater during the winter Olympics. She dropped her Japanese citizenship so she could train/live in Russia. Because Russia has a stronger tradition/resources in that sport.
What needs to happen is to "export" the Korean training.
All HuK symbolizes, as the dreamhack commentators put (not Day9/Apollo) after his victory is that ANYBODY who trains hard enough in the right environment, can become a champion.
I think HuK's win should be attributed to the undying dedication and confidence of the man himself. Just look at the Homestory Cup. He overcame his own self-proclaimed, which was obviously true, weakest matchup against the best protosses in the world. He took down MC and Naniwa in long series over the course of a couple of hours. Do you really want to dedicate a personal story like this to an entire fraction of the SC2 community.
IMO it doesn't matter whether he is "foreigner" or "korean" in terms of who the win should be attributed to. He is one of the most dedicated progamers in the world and it is showing, and discussing foreigner/korea rivalry is just shallow imoimo.
"foreigners" didn't win it nor did "koreans". The only person who won it is HuK it can't be attributed to anyone else so stop fucking pretending it can :S
EPT
