The 5th KPMC was my second trip to Korea. The first time, I was one of the pair go representatives of the Philippines in the 2nd AABC in 2008.

As before, I was amazed at how Koreans take baduk seriously, but I was even more astonished at their generosity for bringing players together just to play this game.

I was lucky to be selected to go on this all-expense-paid trip to Changwon City. We had three tournaments this year in my country. Each tournament, where the participants ranged from six to sixteen players, gave top placers a number of points and the one with the highest accumulated points get to represent the country to an international tournament.
I was accompanied by a guest official from our association. It had made the trip more interesting unexpectedly, as it were.

The seven rounds of the KPMC that ran in two days were a bit exhausting, especially when majority of my opponents were stronger than I am. But this was what I came to Korea for. A 2-kyu fighting 5-dan and 4-dan players were really the best learning experience, I like to keep telling myself.
I won only two games in the tournament. The final result may be disappointing, and I would rather that I had brought home a better result now that Seol Ki Hong himself had been teaching us. Nevertheless, I loved the time while I was playing all those tournament games. The atmosphere was exhilarating!

We stayed in Korea for seven days. Besides the two-day tournament, there were days devoted to visiting old temples and a royal tomb and also for riding the bus. Changwon was quite far from Incheon, where our plane landed us.

Baduk has a small following in the Philippines, but I hope the stories I had brought home from KPMC festival will make my friends play baduk harder and eat a lot of kimchi. It certainly made me do so.

Thank you, Korea.