Badook TV comes to Europe
Professor Hahn plays a game against Wim Hofman
Do not get excited please, there is not yet a way to receive Badook TV in Europe, no satellite, no cable. If you're lucky, like Wim Hofman, you have a Korean friend that arranged internet access to see at least some of the broadcasts of Badook TV from the hangame site. But what not is might certainly happen to us in the future.
Leiden, the Netherlands
A small group of Korean baduk players toured through Europe after the European Go Congress. I had met some of them already, and other players from the Leiden Go Club had come in contact with them through games on the dashn site, and had already exchanged a lot of e-mail and even some telephone calls. So not a real surprise that when they came to the Netherlands on August 12, 2004, this time it was Leiden, not Amsterdam that met them.
Nevertheless, so in the middle of the summer it is hard to organise things. Normally we could have gone to the Leiden Mindsports centre, but that is closed during the summer holiday. So we went to the pub that is the favourite of most go players in Leiden, the Burcht, to have a couple of games. The weather was reasonable, so we could even sit outside in the afternoon.
Seung Hee Hong, Badook TV producer at work.
It turned out to be a little bit more than just a friendly match. Seung Hee Hong (3 dan) turned out to be a producer for Badook TV and she started filming us and taking interviews from me and Jan van der Steen. Also present was the president of Oromedia, the publisher of Baduk World, mister Changsam Cho. We could exchange many interesting ideas about go in Korea and Europe.
One day
Maybe one day we will see a Korean trained talented young European player becoming a strong professional. Maybe one day we will have the game so popular in Europe that an English language Baduk TV channel becomes a feasible option. These visits will always be remembered as a start.
[2004-08-13]