Prologue

Whenever I visit to Korea, lots of people ask me "How strong are they?"
It is really hard to answer because it depends on how they estimate European Baduk players' strength. Still most of people underestimate European Baduk players. However, they are much stronger than normal Korean Baduk players think.

As it happened in the last Korea prime minister cup, a teenage Ukraine player took the 5th place. Even after the tournament, the winner Sang-hun Lee(7dan, Korea) said the game against Ukraine player was the most difficult game of the tournament.

I researched only top level players.


Example players

Before I start this research, I need to find some example players. Well.. Actually it was not so difficult. I have stayed in Europe for more than 2 and half years, and I knew who is good for the example player for this kind of research.

I choose four 6dan players and four 7dan players in Europe and four Korean players who had stayed in Europe for more than a year. These Korean guys will stand here as your standard. You know, as European players, they do not have many chances to play against Korean or Asian professional players, even with amateur players as well. However, these four guys stayed more than 1 year in Europe as Baduk teachers and played a big number of games with European strong players.

Here is the list of the example players