The strongest country in Asia in e-sports League of Legends (LOL) was Korea. It didn’t take even an hour to prove that fact.
Korea won the LoL final against Taiwan at the Hangzhou Asian Games held at the main stadium of the Hangzhou Esports Center in China on the 29th with a set score of 2-0 in 55 minutes, winning the gold medal and becoming the first champion of the tournament. It was the Korean e-sports team’s second gold medal in the competition, following Street Fighter 5’s Kim Kwan-woo (44) on the 28th, and the Korean team’s first gold medal on the 19th. E-sports, which was adopted as a demonstration sport at the 2018 Jakarta-Palembang Asian Games, received the status of an official sport for the first time in this competition.
LoL is a game where you form a team in five positions, including top, jungle, mid, bottom (or ranged dealer), and support, and battle against the opposing team. The game characters used by players in each position during the game are called ‘champions’, and you win by killing as many opposing champions as possible to turn the situation in your favor and then eliminating the opponent’s base (nexus). Assisting a fellow player with a kill increases your assist, and getting killed by an opponent increases your death.
It took less than 30 minutes for the Korean team to win the first set. About 6 minutes into the game, Korea’s top laner Choi ‘Zeus’ Woo-je (Korea Top) was in danger of being killed by the opponent’s joint attack, but at this time, Seo ‘Kanaby’ Jin-hyeok (Korea Jungle) intervened and countered the opponent’s top line ‘Rest’ Shis-je. He caught it and scored his first kill. The kill score leveled at 4 kills and 3 deaths until the 15-minute mark in the middle of the game, but Korea took a significant lead in buffs by killing three dragons. After taking control of the game, Korea increased its kill score to 9 kills and 4 deaths by 25 minutes and 53 seconds, and the gold, which shows the growth gap between the two teams, increased to more than 8,000. The moment ‘Ruler’ Park Jae-hyuk (Korea bottom) scored Korea’s 9th kill, cheers erupted from the audience as if they were confident of victory, and the sound of “Korea” cheering continued to ring out. As Taiwan rapidly collapsed, the Korean national team pushed into the main gate of the opponent’s bottom line around 28 minutes and 20 seconds, and there were only three Taiwanese champions who could stop it. Amidst the exchange of kills and deaths, the Korean national team eventually recorded 15 kills, 5 deaths, and 36 assists, destroying the Taiwanese Nexus in 29 minutes and 4 seconds, reporting victory.
The 2nd set was not much different. By the middle of the game, Korea토토사이트 was down to 4 kills and 6 deaths. However, in a teamfight (large-scale battle) that took place in the mid lane around the 17th minute, Jaehyuk Park got 1 kill and began chasing with 5 kills and 6 deaths, and the amount of gold that had been lost throughout the game began to reverse. In another teamfight that took place in the midfield around the 19th minute, ‘Chovy’ Jeong Ji-hoon (Korean midfielder) added 1 kill to tie the score at 6 kills and 6 deaths, and then Choi Woo-jae and Park Jae-hyuk added kills in succession, turning the kill score around with 8 kills and 6 deaths. succeded. Cheers erupted again from the Korean audience. Afterwards, Korea confirmed victory without giving up the kill score lead even once. In particular, the Chinese national team scored one kill by crowding Jeong Ji-hoon on the top line around the 20th minute, and Jae-hyuk Park, who came to help Jeong Ji-hoon, killed three opponents in a row and dominated the game, just like his game nickname ‘Ruler’. I started doing it. The Korean national team then swept away all five champions of the Taiwanese national team in a team fight that took place on the bottom line around the 25th minute. Korea ultimately devastated the opposing Nexus in 25 minutes and 56 seconds with a record of 17 kills, 9 deaths, and 39 assists.
It was an expected result. On the 12th, before the tournament, Korea invited Taiwan to the IBEX Studio in Gwangmyeong-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea, and held a national team evaluation match. At that time, Korea won 2-0 against Taiwan. Korea won a landslide victory against Taiwan, which they reunited with after 17 days.
With today’s victory, Korea washed away the pain from five years ago. In the previous Asian Games, where LoL was a demonstration sport, Korea lost 1-3 to China and finished in second place. However, in the ‘real’ competition held as an official event five years later, Korea advanced to the finals with a 2-0 victory over China, the semifinal opponent (on the 28th), and even defeated Chinese Taipei the next day, proving itself as the strongest country in Asia by winning all of the competitions.
Jeong Ji-hoon of the Korean national team and Sang-hyeok “Faker” Sang-hyeok, who plays overlapping positions in midfield, did not play in the finals on this day. Lee Sang-hyuk started only one set in one game against Kazakhstan among the eight sets in five games that the Korean national team played until the finals. Lee Sang-hyuk, who had been in poor condition before the competition due to a wrist injury, appeared at the stadium on the 28th and revealed that he had recently been suffering from a cold.