Top eSports players in South Korea 2023, by total prize money earned
As of March 2023, Sang Hyeok Lee, also known as "Faker", has earned around 1.4 million U.S. dollars in prize money. This makes him the top South Korean earner of prize money from eSport tournaments.
Lee has earned all his prize money from League of Legends tournaments. League of Legends, often referred to as LoL, is a free-to-play MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) game developed by Riot Games. Even though the game is more than a decade old, it is still enjoying a major popularity among South Koreans. As of December 2022, around 39 percent of the total playtime in so-called PC bangs was accumulated by League of Legends.
E-sports are a big part of modern South Korean culture. After the PC bangs, a type of LAN gaming center, formed from regular internet cafes in the early 2000s, they became a hotspot for gamers, both casual and professional. PC gamers use those spaces to meet with their peers and use the high-end computers provided to play games. As users usually play multiplayer games in those facilities, competitions quickly emerged and even got funded by the government as well as big South Korean companies. South Korea was the first country to build a stadium dedicated to E-Sports. To this day, gaming and e-Sports are largely enjoyed by many South Koreans.
League of Legends
Lee has earned all his prize money from League of Legends tournaments. League of Legends, often referred to as LoL, is a free-to-play MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) game developed by Riot Games. Even though the game is more than a decade old, it is still enjoying a major popularity among South Koreans. As of December 2022, around 39 percent of the total playtime in so-called PC bangs was accumulated by League of Legends.
E-Sports
E-sports are a big part of modern South Korean culture. After the PC bangs, a type of LAN gaming center, formed from regular internet cafes in the early 2000s, they became a hotspot for gamers, both casual and professional. PC gamers use those spaces to meet with their peers and use the high-end computers provided to play games. As users usually play multiplayer games in those facilities, competitions quickly emerged and even got funded by the government as well as big South Korean companies. South Korea was the first country to build a stadium dedicated to E-Sports. To this day, gaming and e-Sports are largely enjoyed by many South Koreans.
