Finishing Old Business

When Baek ‘Dear’ Dong Jun landed in Anaheim three years ago to compete in his very first BlizzCon, he came as an awe-inspiring conqueror, marching on a long and triumphant Royal Road. Expectations were sky high.

Even after winning Code S on his first attempt a few months prior, there had still been doubters. His run was quite easy compared to past tournaments, people said. SuperNova, DongRaeGu, Sleep, Trap, Maru, and soO? Pah. Amateurs. He got lucky.

Dear silenced them by following up his GSL victory with another triumph, winning the WCS Season 3 Finals in Canada, taking out three of Korea’s most impressive players along the way—the venerable MC, OSL champion Maru and the world’s greatest zerg SoulKey. Names of legends. Dear showcased never-before-seen precision in all of his actions in the game, be it in his impenetrable defence or his lightning harassment. He used superior high templar positioning to land devastating storms, flanked armies with warp prisms and unleashed harassment strikes of chargelots and templar against his opponents’ bases. Dear had mastered Protoss like no one else before. He was at the top and he was under high pressure. Many expected him to expand his Royal Road to Anaheim, take BlizzCon by storm and become one of StarCraft 2’s greatest stars after only half a year.

If this story had an early happy ending, Dear would have done that. He would have taken the championship and created a legacy we would still talk about to this day. Jaedong took this opportunity away from him though—only to fail himself in the Grand Final. Dear’s long Royal Road had finally ended, terminated by a former Royal Roader himself.

With the magical year of 2013 coming to an end, Dear’s Odyssey began. His team SouL crumbled under financial problems and disbanded, leaving the players to fight for survival by themselves. Dear could have probably found a solid team in Korea to pick him up at this time, but like many other Koreans the promise of rich rewards in the West pulled Dear away from home. In hindsight, his comment on joining mousesports (“I’m both scared and thrilled”) couldn’t have been more spot on. After a few weeks the Protoss player found himself without a team again, as mouz suddenly decided to focus on Western players and let Dear go.

Weakened from travelling to international tournaments and lacking practice partners, weary from broken promises, a betrayed and deceived Dear vanished. Jaedong had forcefully ended his Royal Road, but in a sense mousesports destroyed Dear’s chance to continue a promising career in Korea by first isolating and weakening him, and then letting him fall into a dark pit as they cut him loose.

That Dear fell down deep is no question: The slow crawl out of the depths took him over a year. He never gave up though, despite the setback. He proved his ability to survive and people recognized that, among them the staff of Samsung Galaxy. The team had lost some of its key players to retirement and looked for a new core, which would be strong enough to hold a younger, more inexperienced group of players together. In Dear, they found the man they were looking for. He had held a similar role for the remnants of STX SouL, he was a successful and hardworking player and now he had also seen the ugliest side of the business. Baek Dong Jun finally found a new home.

He had missed out on a year of Proleague and his momentum, his confidence from the grand streak of 2013 was gone, but he finally saw the light of a new morning. With it came results, slowly but steady: A top 8 finish in the inaugural season of SSL, a top 4 at the end of 2015 in GSL. Dear felt more and more confident and it showed in his play, as the old precision and strive for perfection we saw from him in 2013 returned. In 2016, finally, Dear made his return into Korea’s elite cadre.

Samsung’s ace battled his way into the semi-finals of Code S in both seasons, beating favoured opponents while still staying under the radar. Truth be told, it’s easy to miss a player like Dear. He isn’t especially flashy in his play or his interviews. He just does what needs to be done, always on the lookout for improvement. Dear has learned the hard way that—ultimately—victory is the only thing guaranteeing a progamer security, which reflects in his very solid playstyle.

He still lacks a triumph though. Dear hasn’t won a big tournament since his twin Royal Roads in 2013, although last season’s GSL marks his third consecutive fall in the semifinals. This year, only the eventual champions Zest and ByuN were able to stop him from reaching the Grand Finals. However, together with another top 8 finish in SSL, his results were enough to qualify him for his second BlizzCon.

Dear is once again competing in the years’ greatest event, but this time he’s flying farther away from the sun, knowing what happens when you dare to go too close. The expectations for him are… what are they, really? Many people might struggle to recall a game he played this year, will ask how he even qualified for this tournament. Three years ago Dear was a hot topic when he travelled to Anaheim. He was the next big thing in the making. No such titles can be attributed to him nowadays. One should not see this a failure though, because after all he’s been through, he competes here once more. Unlike Jaedong, who hasn’t been seen for months. Unlike mousesports, who are all but irrelevant in SC2 now.

They put hurdles in Dear’s way; he stumbled and fell. And yet he has survived them all, has dragged himself to his feet and is now ready to complete the path he set foot upon back in 2013. It may not be a Royal Road anymore, but it’s still Dear’s road to walk.