The Most Famous
GO PLAYERS from South Korea
This page contains a list of the greatest South Korean Go Players. The pantheon dataset contains 2 Go Players, NaN of which were born in South Korea. This makes South Korea the birth place of the 0th most number of Go Players.
Top 2
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary South Korean Go Players of all time. This list of famous South Korean Go Players is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography's online popularity.
1. Lee Chang-ho (b. 1975)
With an HPI of 55.23, Lee Chang-ho is the most famous South Korean Go Player. His biography has been translated into 17 different languages on wikipedia.
Lee Chang-ho (Korean: 이창호; born 29 July 1975) is a South Korean professional Go player of 9-dan rank. Considered to be one of the greatest Go players of all time, Lee was ranked #1 in the world in Go ELO rankings from 1991 to 2006.
2. Lee Sedol (b. 1983)
With an HPI of 53.39, Lee Sedol is the 2nd most famous South Korean Go Player. Her biography has been translated into 27 different languages.
Lee Sedol (Korean: 이세돌; born 2 March 1983), or Lee Se-dol, is a South Korean former professional Go player of 9 dan rank. As of February 2016, he ranked second in international titles (18), behind only Lee Chang-ho (21). His nickname is "The Strong Stone" ("Ssen-dol"). In March 2016, he played a notable series of matches against the program AlphaGo that ended in Lee losing 1–4. Lee announced his retirement from professional play in November 2019, stating he could never be the top overall player of Go due to the increasing dominance of AI, which he called "an entity that cannot be defeated". Lee shared in a 2024 interview, "losing to AI, in a sense, meant my entire world was collapsing. ... I could no longer enjoy the game. So I retired."
People
Pantheon has 2 people classified as South Korean go players born between 1975 and 1983. Of these 2, 2 (100.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living South Korean go players include Lee Chang-ho, and Lee Sedol. As of April 2024, 1 new South Korean go players have been added to Pantheon including Lee Chang-ho.
