South Korea
A 3-months journey in South Korea: starting from a baduk class (better known as the japanese go) at the Kings Baduk Center to the travel in a extremely resourceful country with splendid people.
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At night in Kim Sung Ryong's house he showed us some books he studied. Before becoming a professional when he was 14, he studied a lot of famous japanese player's games, from Honinbo Shuwa (本因坊秀和), Honinbo Shuei (本因坊秀栄) to Sakata Eio (坂田 栄男). The books he has are precious and rare, taken directly from Japan, and their value is thousands dollars. Every book contains from 200 to 300 games record, and in order to improve he replayed all the games and he used to finish a book in tree days! Last Updated (Wednesday, 23 September 2009 16:50)
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We visited it Thursday during the evening, it's situated close to the subway Wangsimni Station. A Jimjilbang, I already wrote about it, means "sauna room", and there are many in Seoul. With 7000₩ (about 4€) you can enter this structure with many floors, and there's everything inside: a gym with a lot of gym equipment, big room to rest, air-conditioned rooms with different temperatures (75°C, 58°C, 72°, -12°C), a pool and whirlpool baths with different temperatures (45°C, 42°C, 38°C, 18°C) both in korean and japanese style, and then other korean style sauna rooms at 88°C, finnish style at 82°C and stainless at 55°C. Other than all these, it's possibile to have a massage and skin cleaning (price is from 12000 to 40000₩), and of course have a haircut. Last Updated (Saturday, 24 October 2009 17:51)
Together with Kim Sung Ryong, we visited a go school (baduk dojang) in Seoul during Thursday afternoon. Some kids were yeongusaeng, that are players studying to become professionals, other less strong. I played two game with a kid, the first one as black without komi and I lost because I let escape an invasion group, while I won the second one. Last Updated (Saturday, 24 October 2009 17:44)
Thursday morning I went with Scott and Janine by car with Kim Sung Rae in Seoul, and we went in a conference hall in a downtown hotel facing the city hall and Deoksugung Temple. It was a special event related to baduk popularization by schools like King's Field. There were many important people, both professional players (Lee Sedol and many others) and other people. We had lunch also with Kim Sung Ryong, and soon after he parted with me, Francesco, Gabriel, Sebastian and Ofer to continue the day. Last Updated (Saturday, 09 May 2009 06:58)
Wednesday we started to take outside the playing tables, and a new league was published. Last Updated (Saturday, 09 May 2009 06:27)
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South Korea

