K-beauty, K-food, K-dramas and K-pop, explained
Korean esports teams centre on the 10 clubs in the LCK (League of Legends Champions Korea), and most of them carry the name of a telecom, an insurer, a bank or a food company. T1 grew out of SK Telecom, Gen.G descends from Samsung’s old teams, and Hanwha Life Esports belongs to an insurer inside the Hanwha Group. Learn who owns a team and you can usually guess how it spends, how it behaves, and which rivalry it’s cau…
Why Korea is good at League of Legends: its teams won every Worlds title from 2013 to 2017. That run grew out of two decades of groundwork: PC bang culture, a ladder packed with elite players on one fast server, team houses that make practice a full-time job, and the LCK, which Riot Games has run as a franchised league since 2021.
What is a PC bang in Korea: a gaming café, often open 24 hours, where you rent a fast PC by the hour. Bang (방) just means room, so a PC bang is a PC room, and Korea has them on almost every busy street, usually one floor up, marked by a glowing sign. You walk in, buy time at a kiosk or counter, sit at a high-spec machine with every big game already installed, and order noodles to your seat without getting up.