Lee Sedol faces punishment in Korea


	Home / MyStuff	Go Library	Forum	Articles	Blogs	Tournaments	Users

Lee Sedol faces punishment in Korea

Bookmark | < Prev | Next >

After refusing to take part in the Korean teams competition and causing a delay in all the KBA's (Korean Baduk Association) tournaments, the pros voted that Lee should be punished. Next month KBA will decide if the punishment will consist in money, points in the korean national rating or even a ban from international tournaments!

Lee reasoned that he doesn't want to play because of the rating system. He would loose a lot of points as a 9p if he would get kicked by a (side note: younger and strong) 1p :)

But everybody knows that Lee is playing in the chinese teams tournament where he gets US $10k for a win compared to just US $1k in Korea.

So let's see what KBA will decide for him.

2nd June edit (5 days after the first posting). This appeared in a korean newspaper (http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/06/01/2009060102149.html?srchCol=news&srchUrl=news1 - translated by Kirby).

Earlier, Lee Sedol refused to be a part of the Baduk League. Because of this, the go organization there decided to put forth some sort of a punishment for Lee Sedol. According to Lee Sedol's brother, Lee Sedol is quite physically and mentally tired, and they both agreed that it would be best for him to take a leave of absence from being a pro player for 1.5 years.

This may cause problems because Lee Sedol of the titles and game scores that Lee Sedol has, and he has 2 international events coming up.

Lee Sedol knows that these two international events are important, so he will participate in these two, and then take a 1.5 year break.

If he loses the semifinals of the Fujitsu, then he will be finished with that tournament, and will participate in a "TV Asia" tournament. If he wins, then he will play until the beginning of July.

He wants to return around January 2011.

The reason that he wants to take a break is partly due to the movements of the pro organization in Korea. The Korean pro organization recently had a vote for taking action against Lee Sedol's "unexpected behavior". People against the vote were 37 voters, those for the vote were 86, and those with no opinion were 2. However, the details of his punishment was postponed, and they forwarded the decision to the board of directors of the Hanguk Kiwon.

The things that they believed that Lee Sedol did wrong were as follows:

-He didn't participate in some official events.
-He refused to pay some of the royalties that he received in China (he is expected to pay a portion to one of the go organizations in Korea).
-He didn't follow some sort of copyright rules for game records.
-Biggest issue: He did not participate in the Baduk League this year.

In response to this, Lee Sedol's side said, "We have kept quiet, because we didn't want to make a big deal about this, but we also have quite a bit to say on the manner." He expressed disappointment for the actions Hanguk Kiwon and the other referenced go organization involved.

In regard to not participating in the Baduk League, Lee Sedol's brother commented, "They already officially told the Hanguk Kiwon that Lee Sedol would participate if there were 8 teams in the league (I assume that there weren't). Because of the economic crisis, there have been many changes in the number of participating teams. Shinan Gun made a team with Lee Sedol as the representative player". The Hanguk Kiwon had no response to this.

The drawing for the dates of the preliminary matches got postponed, because the Hanguk Kiwon was trying to persuade Lee Sedol to participate.

It caused a lot of inconvenience for many pros. If Lee Sedol quits his official games for awhile, there is still are issues remaining with his contracts.

In the Chinese league, Lee Sedol had a contract with Gui Juh-oo team to participate for about 10 games this year. Thus far, he has finished only one game. Last march, Lee Sedol had a contract with the "King's Baduk School" for name-brand use. The author of the article wonders if Lee Sedol can still maintain the status required by this contract without playing in these matches.

The Hanguk Kiwon ruling about this break was that, if the person desires a break, they will provide them in unites of 1 year (1 year, 2 years, 3 years, etc.). Out of the current Hanguk Kiwon pros, there are 6 players that are taking a break right now.

The Hanguk Kiwon's secretary general says, "If he applies for a leave of absence, we will deal with it following the rules. However, taking a leave of absence, and the punishments that they give Lee Sedol will be separate issues." The secretary general also commented that he did not think that the leave of absence was a good choice.

John Fairbairn's oppinion:

This is not quite a new story in that Yi Se-tol has a bit of a track record of doing his own thing, and when the notice of a meeting on the matter was announced a couple of weeks ago, it was pretty obvious that it was meant as a motion of censure against Yi. So "his" decision to take a break may have to be reinterpreted as a decision by others to force him out. What may also have happened is that "they" voted to ban him for, say, three months and he upped the stakes by threatening to stay out longer.

As I understand it, he was expected to pay 5% of his fees from China to the Hanguk Giwon, which he refused. He prefers to play in China because the pay there is about five times higher. He was also expected to hand over copyright of his games to the HG for collective administration. He refused. In the Orient, the nail that sticks up is usually hammered down, so this sort of action was perhaps inevitable at some point. At the moment, with so many pros fretting about their income, I expect a lot of hammers have been volunteered.

Share it:

Comments

User	Post
benutzu	6/2/2009 4:53:33 PM The edited part posted today comes from http://godiscussions.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9358

Please login to post comments