KkOma Announced As Head Coach Of South Korea’s LoL Team

Legendary League of Legends coach, Kim “kkOma” Jeong Gyun was announced as the head coach of South Korea’s national LoL team. The announcement surfaced over six months before the 2022 Asian Games Hangzhou.

The 36-year-old LoL strategist was announced as the head coach of South Korea’s national League of Legends team on Friday, March 26. The announcement comes six months ahead of the 2022 Asian Games Hangzhou launch.

KkOma now has plenty of time to start assembling the roster that will represent the country in the tournament. Who he might pick remains to be seen, but it’s way too early to start speculating.

As announced, kkOma was chosen as the head coach of the Korean LoL team as a result of an open recruitment process, which started back in January. According to the Korean e-Sports Association (KeSPA), which led the recruitment process, the coaches were ranked based on their past achievements and picked after thorough interviews.

In the end, the commission chose the current DWG KIA coach, kkOma, who will now work with the KeSPA committee to select six Korean LoL players to form a national league roster. The selection phase will reportedly start sometime next month, in April.

It remains to be seen who will be on the roster and when the lineup will be revealed. However, we should get to see Korea’s national team lineup before June, which is when regional qualifiers will begin.

In the announcement, KeSPA also revealed that South Korea’s national team for the upcoming Asian Games would receive support from the Korea Institute of Sport Science. The latter will prepare a special training program that will focus on both physical and mental strength.

In the 2018 Asian Games, South Korea won the top honors of the events’ StarCraft II tournament. However, they could only manage a silver medal in the LoL tournament when they lost against the Chinese team in the finals.

Last time out, Korea entered the tournament with top laner Kim “Kiin” Gi-in, jungler Han “Peanut” Wang-ho, mid laner Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok, ADC Park “Ruler” Jae-hyuk, and support Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in. It remains to be seen whether the same lineup will be used for the 2022 Asian Games, but at least a couple of players from the previous roster will likely be in the mix to re-join the team.

The 2018 Asian Games marked the first time in history that esports was included in the event. Last time out, it only served as a demonstration event, but it will serve as a medal event for the 2022 Asian Games – expanding the program to 42 sports.

In the 2022 Asian Games, South Korea will be represented in five esports. That includes League of Legends, Hearthstone, PUBG Mobile, Street Fighter V, and FIFA 2022.

Besides the five events, the 2022 Asian Games will also host Dota 2, Fream of the Three Kingdoms 2, and Arena of Valor competitions. However, South Korea decided not to send players to compete in these titles this year.

So even though South Korea will compete in only five titles, the country should have a good chance to compete for top spots. And that particularly holds true for its LoL team.

As a country filled with some of the best LoL players in history, South Korea is expected to be one of the favorites to go all the way. And we can be sure that kkOma is the right man to lead his nation to glory.

Still, South Korea did well enough to reach the finals, where they lost against the Chinese team.