South Korea owns League of Legends.
Well, technically, North America does, as developer Riot Games was founded and based in Los Angeles, California, but let's be straightforward: the South Koreans are the true owners of the game. Of the last four Summoner's Cup Finals -- the pinnacle of a year's worth of games across the globe -- five of the eight finalists have been South Korean teams.
This year, it's the same story: if one of the three South Korean teams don't hoist the Summoner's Cup at the finals come the end of October, it's going to be a disappointment. Both finalists from last year's event, SK Telecom T1 and ROX Tigers, are back to continue their intense rivalry, and Samsung Galaxy, the organization that won the 2014 World Championship, is back at Worlds after a lengthy two-year rebuild.
Before the South Korean clubs begin their campaign to make it a four-peat, let's take a walk down memory lane.
Season 1
No team(s)
Oh look, the only Summoner's Cup without a South Korean team in the finals was the one where there were none competing in it. I am shocked and amazed the only tournament where a European team made it to the finish line is one neither South Korea nor China competed in.
And even with those shortened odds, a North American team still didn't make the finals. Ouch.
Season 2
Azubu Frost: 2nd
NaJin Sword: 5th-8th
The only year where South Korean teams participated but didn't win the Summoner's Cup was also its first. After starting up its domestic league known at the time as OGN Champions (now simply LCK), the stage was set for the South Koreans to make their mark as a nation at the World Championships. After the meteoric success of StarCraft: Brood War in the late 90's and early 00's which began the competitive gaming boom in South Korea, League of Legends was seen as the successor.
Azubu Frost was expected to make Worlds since the inception of professional League of Legends teams in South Korea, but its qualifying partner that year, NaJin Sword, was a surprise. Azubu Blaze, the winners of the first season of OGN Champions, was expected to make it to the international stage and possibly face its sister team in the Summoner's Cup Finals. To the shock of fans, Blaze was upset in the Regional final by the over-aggressive, tower-diving club of NaJin Sword.
At Worlds, NaJin was hit-and-miss. It breezed through the group stages, beating all three teams it was pitted up against. But the team wasn't able to make the semifinals after getting in the first round of the bracket stage versus the Taiwanese upstarts, Taipei Assassins. Sword would be most fondly remembered for its captain Yoon "MakNooN" Ha-woon, whose lighthearted personality outside the game and devil-may-care inside it charmed the Los Angeles crowds.
Frost accomplished what was expected of them in making the Summoner's Cup Finals. One of the heavy favorites entering the tournament alongside the likes of Russia's Moscow 5, a South Korean and European final appeared to be on the docket. Yet, as it did against Sword, the Assassins eliminated the Russians from the tournament, and set up a final between TPA and Frost.
At the University of Southern California's Galen Center, TPA would make it a hat trick by beating Frost in a trio of upsets. Frost was powered by the top lane prowess of Park "Shy" Sang-myeon and intellect of support Hong "MadLife" Min-gi throughout the competition, yet were no match for the combined power of TPA's stalwart top laner Wang "Stanley" June Tsan and ace, Kurtis "Toyz" Lau.
South Korea would leave the World Championships for the first (and last) time without the Summoner's Cup.
Season 3
SK Telecom T1: Champions
NaJin Black Sword: 3rd-4th
Samsung Ozone: 9th
The 2013 World Championships was a weird one for South Korea.
While everyone will remember the emergence of Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok as the unkillable demon rookie who took the world by storm, the other South Korean teams are often lost in the shuffle.
NaJin Black Sword, like the year prior, was a total wild card walking into the tournament. It won the first season of Champions after the 2012 season, but its results continued to slide as the split progressed. By the time the 2013 Worlds took place, Black Sword was considered somewhat of a fluke due to farming circuit points in the first half of the year before slumping for a majority of the summer.
Samsung Ozone, like Sword, were a team that won the earlier split in the year and got in through circuit points, albeit the fact it was a much sturdier team than its counterpart. Ozone, however, would become the only South Korean team to never make it out of the group stages when it lost to Gambit Gaming in a tiebreaker. A lot of the blame for Samsung's disconnection at Worlds pointed towards the team's sale from the MVP organization to Samsung. The team also attempted to upgrade its top lane by starting an untested rookie in the group stages, Jang "Looper" Hyeong-seok, and moving its former starter, Yoon "Homme" Sung-young, to coaching status. Looper performed well in his debut; his Singed play was the highlight of the tournament for Ozone, but the rest of the team around him faltered.
Black Sword did much better than it was expected to. NaJin eliminated Gambit in the quarterfinals to exact a bit of revenge for Samsung, and then it went toe-to-toe with SK Telecom T1 in the semifinals. Rookie mid laner Kim "Nagne" Sang-moon starred on Gragas for the first half of the series, putting Black Sword a single win away from the finals; however, after T1 was able to get a feel for the matchup, it banned out the Gragas, and Nagne became ineffective in the final two games that let the tournament favorites of T1 make it to the Summoner's Cup Final.
SKT T1, before beating NaJin, had an eventful group stage where it only dropped a single game to China's OMG. The mid matchup between South Korea's MVP Faker and China's MVP Yu "Cool" Jia-Jun was seen as the storyline of the tournament, and a final between the two teams seemed to be a fitting finale after going 1-1 in the group stages. Alas, OMG got upset by fellow Chinese team Royal Club in the quarterfinals, and it would eventually be an SK Telecom T1 vs. Royal Club Summoner's Cup Final.
Royal Club was led by the AD carry of the tournament, Jian "Uzi" Zi-Hao, a young prodigy like Faker who was heralded for his raw individual skill. In the finals, though, it was no contest: SK Telecom T1 dismantled Royal in an anticlimactic sweep, and Faker ascended to the throne as the world's best player with his teammates beside him.
Season 4
Samsung White: Champions
Samsung Blue: 3rd-4th
NaJin White Shield: 5th-8th
It was Azubu Blaze in 2012, KT Bullets in 2013 and SK Telecom T1 in 2014. Similar to NaJin Black Sword the year prior, SK Telecom T1 dominated at the start of the year but began to falter before ultimately succumbing to elimination in the South Korean Regionals.
The expected Summoner's Cup Final was an all-Samsung affair between Samsung Blue and Samsung White. Although White were never able to defeat its sister team, it was still seen as the bigger threat. Formerly known as Ozone, the team came into Worlds with the mindset of making up for 2013's embarrassment, and it did just that with its boa constrictor style of play, choking out opposing teams with not only stronger lanes but superior vision and map control. Blue, the opposite of White, was an average laning team but more than made up for its early game faults by being the best teamfighting club in the world come late game.
NaJin White Shield, the oddball of the South Korean trio, was the unlikely winner of the Korean Regionals. The team, which only made a single domestic final the entire year (and lost to Blue) got its act together for the king-of-the-hill format of the Regionals and upended the reigning Korean champion KT Rolster Arrows and defending world champion SKT T1 to make it into the field of 16.
White was the master of vision and bending opponents to its will. Blue was the master of teamfighting. NaJin White Shield ... were the eccentric cousin, who specialized in being unpredictable and even sometimes rotating their mid lane and top lane depending on the matchups.
White Shield failed at Worlds. It got through the group stages, but was shellacked by OMG in the quarterfinals. Blue and White, on the other hand, went according to plan, and won their respective groups. In the quarterfinals, the Samsung family played against the North American duo of Cloud9 and Team SoloMid, and the result in both matches were the same: Samsung winning 3-1. Unfortunately, bracket luck wasn't on Blue's side, and it ended up facing White in the semifinals.
White finally got the upperhand and made it to the finals without dropping a single map to the teamfighting fanatics. Before Blue could even get to the point where its teamfighting edge would come into play, White would delete them from the map with amazing coordination in the laning phase.
In the finals, for the second year in a row, Royal was waiting. While Uzi was able to gain a point on the scoreboard, taking a single game from White, it wasn't enough to make much of a difference. White won the Summoner's Cup in commanding fashion.
Season 5
SK Telecom T1: Champions
KOO Tigers: 2nd
KT Rolster: 5th-8th
Of course, the one year everyone slept on South Korea was the year it had by far its most successful trip to Worlds.
Post 2014, many of South Korea's top stars -- the lineups of Samsung White and Blue -- left the domestic league to play in China for bigger contracts. This left the Mecca of esports in a state of limbo. SK Telecom T1 was the last bastion of hope.
Faker wasn't enough to prevail against China's superpowered forces at the Mid-Season Invitational, losing to Edward Gaming in the finals. At Worlds, SKT T1 was still looked upon as a favorite, but EDG, along with reigning Chinese champion LGD, were seen as equal or even greater threats.
At Worlds, all three South Korean teams made it out of the group stages with only the ROX Tigers missing a first-place seed into the bracket stage. The Flash Wolves of Taiwan would be the only team at the 2015 World Championships that could boast they had a winning record against a South Korean team, beating the Tigers in both group stage matchups. KT Rolster would fall to the Tigers in the quarterfinals, and SKT T1 would make quick work of the other Taiwanese squad, Ahq, in the first round of the bracket stage.
The semifinals played out like regional warfare: South Korea vs. Europe. SKT T1 took care of business against Origen, and the Tigers took out Europe's undefeated regular-season champion Fnatic on the other side of the bracket. That set up the first ever all-Korean Summoner's Cup Final.
China, who spent millions in the offseason, failed to win when it mattered the most, and none of its three representatives made it past the first round of the bracket stage.
In the finals, it was -- hopefully, it changes at this year's World Championship -- another flat ending. SKT T1 picked up two quick victories before Tigers captain Lee "Hojin" Ho-jin took a heroic, career-best game in the third set. And right when the crowd started standing firmly behind the underdog Tigers, the series ended with Faker using his signature Ryze to rip through KOO's feeble defenses.