“I’m glad I got a text that said ‘I love you son’ in a clumsy, hard-to-type text.”
And then he couldn’t speak again. As he said the word “mother,” he burst into tears at the overwhelming emotion that rose deep in his chest.
“Street Fighter,” the game he’d played as a student at the local arcade and hadn’t stopped playing since he was 44 years old. His mother may have looked worried, but her son is now an Asian Games gold medalist. A mother can’t help but feel a pang of pride in her heart for the man who sold ‘The Way of the Outcast’.
Kim Kwan-woo, 44, who won the e-sports Street Fighter category the day before, was overcome with emotion as he spoke of his mother at a press conference on the fourth floor of the Sports and Diplomacy Lounge of the Korean Sports Council at the Grand New Century Hotel in Hangzhou, China, on Monday. 카지노사이트가이드
When asked, “Did you get any congratulatory messages from adults after winning the gold medal yesterday?” “My mom is the only one, and she doesn’t know about it yet. She’s in an age where it’s hard to find her, so someone else contacted her,” he said.
“I think someone who knows my mom contacted her and said, ‘Your son won a gold medal,’ or something like that, so she sent me a text that was a little bit clumsy, like it was hard to type, and she said, ‘I’m so happy for you,’ and I’m so happy for you,” he said.
Unable to continue, Kim Kwan-woo burst into tears and had to choke back the tears, even after the press and other participants applauded, before finally saying, “Relatives I haven’t spoken to in a long time also called to congratulate me,” and then sobbing again.
The press conference was attended by a number of star athletes, including fencer Koo Bon-gil. “I’m also good at fighting games, especially Tekken. I still do it these days. If Tekken had been held at the Asian Games, I might have been in the ring instead of Kim Kwan-woo,” he said, drawing laughter.
The day before, Kim became South Korea’s first-ever all-around e-sports champion, defeating Taiwan’s Hsiang-Yu Lin 4-3 in the final of Street Fighter, the sport’s first Asian Games event.
“When I was a kid, I played the Street Fighter series in and out of arcades, even though I was scolded by my homeroom teacher and my parents,” he told Korean media after his victory.
He never stopped playing as an adult, and now he’s a full-time professional gamer, having given up his day job.
“When I was a kid, arcades were absolutely taboo.
I was dragged out of school, scolded by teachers, and hated by my parents,” he recalls. But eventually, his parents gave in, saying, “Do what you want,” and years later, times have changed, and he’s an Asian Games gold medalist.
He trained up to 10 hours a day to improve his skills and is the oldest gold medalist for Team Korea at the Games.