As you may have heard, Inven Global has a special reporter on-site at the League of Legends World Championship this year: legendary botlaner Bae "Bang" Jun-sik is at the event as an interviewer. On the first day of the Play-In stage's Knockout phase Bang already took his first steps into esports journalism. He interviewed his AD Carry colleague Sun "Cody Sun" Li-Yu, just after Clutch Gaming had secured their spot at Worlds' main event.

Bang: Hello, I'm Bang for Inven Global.

Cody: Nice to meet you Bang! [laughs]

I've been watching you, and I have some questions for you. First one: How did you prepare for your match Royal Youth?

Ehm, I knew that they were a much more standard team than, for example, Unicorns of Love. So I just wanted to just play well myself and at the same time make my teammates play well too.

What do you mean when you say Royal Youth is a 'standard team'?

I mean that they don't play Mages bot, or Heimerdinger things. Stuff like that. They mostly prioritize similar champions to us, and have a standard play style in general. So we were mostly focussing on ourselves, to make sure that we do our own jobs.

The performance in the Group Stage of the Play-Ins wasn't stellar. Did that bring any extra pressure?

Not really. Our team's play style is really crazy, I think. Even though we try hard to reduce the risks, I think we naturally we're more aggressive and we take more risks than other teams. Even as a player on the team it's hard to know when we're going to play well, play clean. But we always try our best to play as well as we can.

You have made Worlds three times now, with three different teams. What is your secret?

I guess my only secret is just that I try to improve every year. If I get lucky and go to Worlds, I learn from every team there.

I don't think you get lucky! [Laughs]

True, thanks.

It looks like the group stage is going to be tough. If Splyce qualifies, you're automatically in group C. The group of death. How will you prepare for that?

Ehm, well we're just going to focus on ourselves. If we are a good team, we would win against them anyways. I don't think any of us are scared, and everyone is actually really excited to play in Group C. We're against the best players and the best teams then, and that's what winning Worlds is all about.

You guys could be the best, who knows? Next question: Of the teams that are at Worlds—in any group—who do you think would have the hardest botlane to play against?

Probably... RNG.

And why?

Because RNG always plays the botside. I can already expect five men in the botlane at about... 2 minutes.

Do you have any last words for the fans, before you play in the next Group Stage?

For the fans, if we're going to group C: Know that no one on our team is scared of them. We're just going all-in. We don't care if we die or lose. We're just going to try our best and see where it takes us. Honestly, who knows?

Inven has a lot of Korean fans, I think. Do you know anything in Korean? No bad words!

Oh ehm, I think it's "kimochi"? [It's Japanese]

Oh that's a little bit bad! It's 'Kimoti' [in Korean, 기모띠] Who taught you that?!

Olleh!

Olleh??

Yes, you can put that in the article!

Do you know what it means?

Yeah uh... it's like: "Feels very good." [Both laugh] Since going to Immortals, I've always played with Korean players like Olleh. They've always been really nice to me, and taught me a lot about playing against a Korean team. I always study Korean AD Carry VODs. I watched a lot of your games too.

Oh wow!

I think Korean teams are looking really strong this year and I think they'll do really well this year.