E-sports in South Korea
Would you like to spend eight to sixteen hours a day playing on the computer? Perhaps attend a secondary school and tuition centres which specialise in gaming, with a view to progressing to a university offering a gaming degree? And have your parents cheering you on? To some, this sounds like a dream. It is, however, an increasing reality in South Korea where e-sports has really taken off.
Far from being seen as an addiction, spending long hours at the keyboard in one’s teenage years is now increasingly seen as a respectable path to a future profession. The top gamer in South Korea, Lee Sang-hyeok, known as Fakar, has won the World Championship in League of Legends a record six times. He reputedly earned over US$6m in 2025. He has even been honoured by the South Korean President.
E-sports has become such big business in South Korea that its exports exceed K-pop.
One has to wonder how many people will actually progress to making gaming a career. How many young people burn out? How many young people who do not make the cut end up jobless? How easily can they retrain into a more standard career path? Will employers still want them?
Still, the phenomenon of e-sports does help us to challenge our preconceptions about traditional sports and jobs. In an era in which AI is going to replace many traditional jobs anyway, perhaps we should give the gamers some latitude in pursuing an unconventional path.
