Seung-Min Ryu, who was appointed as the honorary advisor and ambassador of KeSPA on June 10^th at the KeSPA headquarters in Seoul has been showing great admiration for the eSports industry. When eSports was included in the Asian Games as a demonstration sport last year, Ryu was seen at the inauguration of the Korea National eSports Team. He was also the presenter at the 2018 League of Legends World Championship Finals held in South Korea. As the honorary advisor and ambassador of KeSPA, Ryu will now officially be taking his role in advocacy for inducting eSports as a part of the traditional sports.

“The energy we saw at the eSports scene from the Asian Games last year was purely amazing,” said Ryu. “eSports has enormous potentials to enhance the nation’s sports prestige in the world along with table tennis. My focus will be on providing as much opportunities as possible for the Korean eSports players to perform at the highest level around the world. I will also be actively communicating with the sports officials and people at various governing bodies such as IOC, OCA, and GAISF for eSports to be inducted as an official sports program around the world.”

“We are grateful to Mr. Ryu for becoming our honorary advisor and ambassador,” the president of KeSPA, Young-Man Kim said. “Mr. Ryu, as an internationally renowned IOC member will be vital for the eSports industry to take steps forward during such time at the industry where a lot of progresses are being made recently including eSports being included in the Asian Games last year and eSports as an Olympics program being discussed. KeSPA, along with Mr. Ryu, will be striving in every way for eSports in Korea to maintain its reputation around the world, and lead as the industry’s role model.”

*Seung-Min Ryu competed four consecutive times at 2000 Sydney Olympics through 2012 London Olympics. Mr. Ryu won Gold Medals at 2004 Olympics at Athens and 2002 Asian Games at Busan. In 2016, he was appointed as a member of IOC becoming South Korea’s lone member of the committee. This year in March, he was appointed as a member of the OCA (Olympic Council of Asia) Executive Board in his position as Chairman of the OCA Entourage Committee. In May, he was elected to serve as the president of Korea Table Tennis Association until later next year.