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Second only to soccer in popularity as a “sport” in South Korea is playing computer games, or E-Sports as they are known. To get an idea of how big the scene is I dropped by the E-stars Seoul 2009 event being held at the SETEC convention hall south of the Han River. Yuni Lee from JoongAng Ilbo, the major Korean media company who are one of the event’s main sponsors, showed me around  the event’s various areas in what I’m getting to know as typical rush-rush Seoul fashion. In the Tournament Arena the Asia Championships of two games – Club Audition (a dancing game) and Southern Attack (usually shoot to kill stuff) are being played out on rows of monitors either side of the area set aside for the Continental Cup showdowns between teams East and West over the games Counter Strike and Warcraft.

In another hall is the Windy Zone ULTRA Lan-Party (don’t ask me what the name means, please!) This turned out to be a zone where game developers and publishers tested out new product on eager consumers. Get a stamp after you’ve played each of the games and once you have a full card you can go and collect a prize – the nice girl promoting one game gave me the prize any way – it’s the green plushy arm rest thingy, a copy of the character in the game which involved sweeping up a variety of different items around an obstacle course (I think! Sorry, I’m not the most adept gamer).

In the final hall the e-Party was in full swing – this was the family friendly zone; no nasty violent shoot ‘em up games here – just girls likes these in faux-sexy cartoon girl costumes peddling the latest game franchise.

There were plenty of people attending the event, but the real crowds would descend later in the evening once the StarCraft superstars swung on by. In case you didn’t know (I didn’t), StarCraft, an 11 year old military/sci-fi strategy game (that’s practically the equivalent of a dinosaur in gaming circles) has shifted some 5 million copies in Korea since its initial release, despite it never having been translated into Korean. It’s so popular in that there learning English books that use StarCraft terms as the basis of their vocabulary and grammar lessons.

“StarCraft tournaments are screened on TV here seven days  a week. Three of the most famous professional StarCraft players are all South Korean – guys such as Boxer, Nacha and Savior” explained Dan Stemkoski (gamer ID: Artosis) who along with Nick Plott (ID: Tasteless) was providing English language commentary for the event. These guys’ full time job is to be the English voices on the two TV channels that carry e-Sports – Ongamenet and MBC Game. “Its a dream come true,” said Dan, who like Nick has found himself catapulted into the mainstream of Korean pop cultural stardom. The attention they get, though, is nothing compared to that lavished on the star e-gamers who are groomed, primped and sent to the gym as well as having to train for 10 hours a day with one day off. No wonder they’re pretty much burned out by the time they’re 25.