At night — after another day in front of the computer — when it’s just hints of the moon leaking through the shades, the three Koreans goad each other into getting up to make ramyun.
Clothes are strewn about. Some $500 worth of instant noodles and snacks fill the room. They are 6,000 miles away from home and just a few months settled into their Californian lives. There’s the translator, Shin-ung Hwang, who is like the eldest brother. I watched him win little Kirby plushies from a claw machine for all of them, one after another like the claw was just an extension of his arm. There’s jungler Sang-hyun “Chaser” Lee — a tall, lanky guy who adapted quickly to American food. He’d eat whatever was given to him. And then there’s Chan-ho “Ssumday” Kim. One of the best foreign players to ever come to North America. Picky with his food. You don’t need lights to know he’s smiling.
Moments like this give them a brief reprieve from the grind that comes with being a professional gamer. It’s not just long hours playing the game. It’s a permanent existence away from home. The last time Ssumday had a day off was Christmas.
That’s a couple months straight where every single day — weekends included — he’d find himself opening the game client. He’d enter his login, and then he’d be connected. One match found after another.
At a time when major investors — like the Philadelphia 76ers, who back Ssumday’s own team — are laying stakes into the NA LCS, Ssumday has an opportunity to become one of the league’s preeminent stars. Expectations are, understandably, high. At just 20 years old, Ssumday is already a veteran well into his fourth year as a pro. His team’s chances at competing — not just in North America, but on an international stage — are tied to how well he can adjust to life in the City of Angels. And Ssumday — as described by his managers — basically has one mood. And that’s happy or extra happy.
Ssumday reflected on regrets from his first few months and said, “I wish I could learn English faster.” This comes from someone who knew almost nothing when he came. Who then spent 15-20 hours each week practicing the language.
And perhaps he was reflecting on the volatile nature of the scene — already we’ve seen numerous players shuffled in and out of the LCS just this season. Perhaps it’s that we saw his coaches ousted after only a few weeks. Or perhaps it’s his long tenure with the game that has shown him just how quickly the tides can shift.
Perhaps all these things led him to saying, “But I don’t have a lot of time…”
When people say X import or Y import will make great strides once their communication improves, it means so much more than just learning the language. And just learning the language is already a big ask. That League of Legends is an evolving game only exacerbates this. Import players are expected to adapt at a breakneck pace in this ever-changing environment.
The work-life balance meshes into one blob where work is life, and life is work. Juxtapose this next to the fact that the work moments are spent in a digital space and it’s easy to lose track of your physical space. You even lose your name. You’re no longer Chan-ho. You’re Ssumday. And you now live in a country that speaks a different language and drowns its food in oils and salt. Your perceived success is dictated entirely by how well you perform in the digital space — how well you can play League of Legends.
When I said I’d like to take him somewhere in Los Angeles for the day, he requested Universal Studios. I wanted to get to know Chan-ho Kim. Most of his day would be spent with our crew from Riot — it would be his first time in America away from his team.
One of the reasons he wanted to go to Universal is he’s a big fan of fantasy movies and narratives. He cited Lord of the Rings as one of his favorite series, and, of course, Harry Potter. Universal Studios Hollywood just completed The Wizarding World of Harry Potter last year. I asked him which house he thought he would be sorted into. That became clear to me while I spent the previous day with his teammates — “Hufflepuff!”
Team Dignitas celebrated reaching .500 on the season at a Round1 arcade. Ssumday’s favorite game there is a Dance Dance Revolution type of game called Pump It Up Prime. I watched him hit perfect note after perfect note as his feet shifted from one arrow to the next. He is known for having strong mechanics. After a few songs, he stepped aside to let someone else play, and sweat trickled down his face. The words “I LOVE YOU” and some hearts were stitched a few times in different colors across his sweater. This was Team Dignitas’ fearsome top laner.
The DIG house sits atop a hill in Long Beach, CA with an ocean view on one side and mountains on the other. They refer to it affectionately as the “Trap House,” which I gathered has a more insidious meaning than they let on. Flowers line the pavement all the way up to the house — I was warned they’d recently had a problem with bees taking up residency in their patio furniture. The black and yellow seemed like a fitting mascot. A lot of people are deathly afraid of bees, but they’re actually relatively harmless and are super vital to our ecosystem. In some ways, Ssumday is kind of like a bee.
I sat at Ssumday’s desk — which was empty except for his computer peripherals and an English book — and tried to blend in. I guess that’s what Ssumday and co. had to do when they first moved here. Part of blending in, though, meant I needed to be more comfortable with everyone there. Like Ssumday, I wanted to be more than just a fly on the wall. Each team develops its own micro culture — it’s like meeting a partner’s extended family for the first time.
The DIG house is split into thirds: The Koreans sleep upstairs, the bot lane is downstairs, and mid laner Lae-young “Keane” Jang gets his own room — I guess he got excepted from the other Koreans because of his longer tenure here. The main level is where the team practices in what they call “The Lab.” That day, 14 total people were gathered there. I don’t think that was unusual for a weekend. Some desks were decorated a bit more than others. A case of red bull sat on the floor. In the corner was a shelf with a bunch of figurines, including Pulsefire Ezreal, Gangplank, and Philadelphia 76er Jahlil Okafor.
In Korea, he had a lot of fans. It’s not necessarily that he lost them, but the level of interaction just isn’t the same. He said he had a lot more media commitments back then, too. The level of stardom for an esports player is far more established in Korea than Los Angeles. I’m not saying Ssumday is a fame monster, but this too contributed to a feeling of isolation.
I asked him if he ever Googles himself, and he nodded empathically. Even I Google my own name, so it was nice to know Ssumday does it, too. He mostly follows threads on Inven — a Korean forum similar to Reddit — though they don’t talk about him as much these days. He also likes to find fanart of himself — his phone case and his passport case are gifts from fans. He even received a suit from a fan once, which he brought with him to America, though he doesn’t have many chances to wear it. I gathered he’s the type to read basically every tweet or message sent at him.
While we were waiting for people to gather to go out for dinner, ADC Benjamin “LOD” deMunck and support Alex “Xpecial” Chu were also looking at comments about themselves online. When the Koreans finally came down from their room, Xpecial — who, at 24, seemed to take on a bit of an adult role on the team — asked them if they wanted BBQ or Pizza. He’d been Yelping reviews and calling about reservations.
“Pizza, ah?” Ssumday retorted. Unlike Chaser and Hwang, he hadn’t adapted to American food as easily. He still preferred to eat a bowl of rice at each meal.
“Ah?” Xpecial mimicked him. And like that the two went back and forth for a few seconds. Just saying “Ah?” louder and louder each time before bursting into laughter like two macaws. It’s a good reminder that language isn’t the only way we communicate with people. And, possibly, it’s a rather inefficient method of communication. So much can be conveyed through basic syllables or body language or facial gestures.
Ssumday ultimately deferred, and we just ended up at an American chain restaurant called Yard House. Team Dignitas does have an English teacher, though — a woman named Sophie Ahn, who also teaches English to a few other LCS teams. While we were waiting to be seated, she motioned them – Hwang, Chaser, Keane, and Ssumday – over to a street vendor. I don’t think it’s fair to say divisions exist in Dignitas, but those guys definitely got along the best. Keane was quiet, but they assured me he was loud if he’s only around Korean people. The vendor was selling bracelets that they could get their names engraved into. She bought one each for Chaser and Keane. Ssumday only wanted a bracelet if he could give it to someone special.
Everyone ribbed him for being so innocent. That’s the nature of their friendship — it’s a bit of a dogpile, where anyone can be the dog or the pile at any given moment. And so the focus shifted just a few minutes later after they received their bracelets. Chaser put his on immediately, but Keane pocketed it as if embarrassed. They immediately yelled out, “Teacher!” and ratted Keane out. They say snitches get stitches, but damn if that wasn’t funny. Sophie came over and fake-scolded him. He relented and put it on.
It only takes one person to make you feel welcome or wanted in a new place. Everybody from the DIG family made me feel welcome that day, and I suspect that type of environment made it much easier for Ssumday. DIG isn’t the only family he has, though. We reached out to his father, Young Jib Kim, to get to know more about Ssumday. His father admitted, “My biggest worry [about Ssumday going to America]… is even if you go with other Koreans, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re very friendly or close with them. So I was worried he would get lonely when things became tough for him.”
I think he’d be relieved if he saw how Ssumday interacted with his team. People often mistake someone being quiet for being shy. And Ssumday is a little reserved at first, but he’s definitely not shy. He’s happy to meet people and to explore new places. On stage, I don’t remember him speaking much — Xpecial and Chaser handle the bulk of the shotcalling duties — but he had a different kind of noise to him. He just sat there and chewed on a piece of gum. There’s a Rowdy Roddy Piper quote that goes, “I’m here to chew bubblegum and kick some ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum! I half expected him to swallow his gum and get a pentakill.
Throughout the evening, sometimes at the insistence of Sophie, he’d turn to me and ask me a question in English. “How long have you been with Riot?” “How is your food?” And so on. I interviewed him briefly on his second day in America, and at the time he didn’t know any. The rate at which he has improved is really remarkable — but Ssumday, humble as a bee, gave all the credit to his teacher.
Ssumday is, if nothing else, a very giving person. It’s literally in his blood. In Korea, people tie personality traits to blood types. Ssumday and Sophie asked me for mine, but I said I didn’t know. “So American of you,” they said.
Ssumday is Type O, which makes him a very positive and outgoing person. His father says he hasn’t changed much since he was a kid. “[Ssumday] doesn’t like to burden others,” he said. “Does what he needs to very well.” Over and over throughout the night, people from Team Dignitas would come up to me to iterate what a kind person Ssumday is. He’d recently spent an extra $600 on snacks for his teammates. And when Sophie learned I was there to write a feature about him, she put her arms around his shoulder and said to me, “You better say nice things about him! He’s so kind!”
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In Korea, Ssumday's nickname is 썸천사, which means "Ssum Angel." I asked him what he hoped people would walk away from this piece with, and he said, "I just want people to know me better. And those who already do know me — for them to like me even more."
He hadn’t given me any sort of inkling that he had a mean gene in his body. But everyone has their demons. So I asked Ssumday, “What’s the worst thing you’ve done?”
He thought about it and said, “When I was eight or nine, I stole $10 dollars from my dad’s wallet to go to a PC Bang.”
His dad later clarified, “That is the type of thing every troublemaker at home does once. He got punished a lot [for that]. I think that was the first time he got scolded.”
At the time, it was to play Starcraft, which was the game Ssumday’s idol, Lee “Flash” Young Ho, dominated for years. Like Ssumday, Flash played for KT Rolster and motivated Ssumday to practice more and perform better. He wanted to own the stage like Flash. He even played Terran. And now — after finishing his time on KT — his father says he receives a lot from Ssumday. Especially beyond just money.
“Having a son,” he said, “This situation… [brings me] immense happiness. He is an honorable and respectable person.”
As we strapped the seat buckle over our bodies, the Hogwarts Forbidden Journey ride started to move. It’s a 4D rollercoaster that immerses you into the world of wizards. I’m terrified of rollercoasters. I leaned over to Ssumday and yelled over the noise, “Are you scared?”
He smiled and said, “Scared? No. Excited!” And whoosh we went. I don’t think the ride is actually moving all that fast, but the images trick you into thinking it is fast. It has all the ups and downs and twists and turns I imagine pro players face. Ssumday just laughed and yelled “Ooh” or “Ahh” the whole ride. Zipping past dementors and dragons and spiders with one of the best top laners in the world — this was magic.
Even Ssumday has his worries, though.These days, he said, “It’s stressful for me to play games.” Back home, when he’s with his friends — he says they’re bronze — or old teammates, they just want to go to PC Bangs to play more games. They want to play with him. But that’s the last thing he wants to do when he’s with them because gaming is his job.
This stems from the sheer amount of time he’s put into this game. He used to lack confidence as a player, and he apparently fixed it by sacrificing sleep. “I established a goal and tried my best to accomplish it,” he said. I thought he’d quantify it with an elo or something game related. Instead, he said, “I tried to limit my sleep as much as possible. I used to sleep a lot, but I decreased it first from 10 hours to 9. And then all the way down to 5. But I kept falling asleep while I was playing games, so I went back up to 6. That seems to be my limit.”
The other 18 hours of the day were spent on League of Legends. That’s how he put his name into the conversation for best top laners in the world. I think it’s rare for someone to put in the effort to match their own expectations. 18 hours straight of video games is my all-time record. I still feel a little guilty about it. But for him, that’s life.
Individually, though, Ssumday never stopped believing in himself, saying, “I have a lot of experience as a player, so this didn’t affect me too badly. I’ve already experienced the bottom before – there was a time in my life [before I played LoL 18 hours a day] when I was really bad. I learned confidence is really important, so I never doubt myself even during struggles.”
As was the case when Team Dignitas limped to a 1-6 start this split. This initial disappointment was compounded by the way Ssumday finished 2016 with KT Rolster — they dropped a stunning set to Samsung Galaxy and as a result were eliminated from Worlds contention.
Ssumday agreed that it was a disappointing stretch, and said, “I expected a lot from [Team Dignitas], especially since we boot camped together in Korea. But we eventually shifted our mindset to simply avoiding relegation.”
Back in Korea, though, he had people he could turn to. Things were familiar. People sorted their trash. Ordering delivery was a communal thing — unlike here, people make sure to ask if anyone else wants something before ordering. All those little things can build up and cause a lot of extra stress. So for him, becoming close with the other Korean speakers was just as much for survival — in a mental health sense — as it was for team cohesion. Luckily, they seemed to click.
Normally, he leans on his parents — if anyone — when things become really difficult. But since they’re not here, he keeps more to himself. He still calls them once a month, which I imagine is more than a lot of us can say, but the distance is tough. “I don’t usually lean on them a lot to begin with, though,” he says, “I’m not the type to do that.” His father said he’s always been like that.
It wouldn’t have been surprising to see the rough start affect his mentality. And yet he persisted. With David “Cop” Roberson returning to helm the ship, Dignitas corrected course and stormed to an 8-3 record over the next eleven games. With that, they reached .500 on the season and clinched the 6th and final seed in that NA LCS Spring Playoffs, where they’ll face off against Phoenix1. It seems the biggest difference was just a change in team environment and mentality, but they may have always been due for an upswing.
Chaser and Ssumday learning English was like scaling toward the late game. Xpecial said, “If you’re going to scale, you need to make sure you’re equipped properly. You don’t want to go to late game with something useless.” Though, Xpecial assured me he’s confident in his teammates.
Ssumday knows not to take things for granted, though. It doesn’t take much to stop a team’s momentum. In 2013, when he was still on KT Rolster and Insec was at the height of his fame, they went to a Korean amusement park called Everland to celebrate reaching the Quarterfinals.
“A lot of fans followed Insec around the whole time,” he recalled. “We lost pretty soon after that, though.” I knocked on wood and hoped I didn’t jinx another season for him.
Ssumday made sure to stockpile some karma while we were in Hogsmeade. We stopped at a Harry Potter shop called Honeydukes – famous for its sweets, just as Ssumday is famous within the DIG house for his snacks. He ended up buying a bag’s worth of sweets to bring back to his teammates. This is the kind of thing that makes me immediately pin someone as a Hufflepuff.
Throughout the day, Ssumday continued to thank us every time we held a bag for him when he needed to take a photo. And he didn’t complain once about the heat or what we were asking of him. I think he’d have struck any pose we asked of him. I could have told him to fly, and probably, he’d have flown. Instead, I asked him to just be himself. And so he was.
Ssumday loves cherries. For breakfast, he drinks cherry juice. And given the choice, it’s the flavor he always picks. The boy with the sweet tooth and a sweeter disposition. I heard he once bought some 900 ice cream bars for a school that he was visiting, so I asked him about it. He just laughed and nodded. I think fans will find him express himself more and more as he becomes comfortable with English. At the beginning of the split, he surprised me — after a mostly modest interview — by saying, “I want to defeat everybody.”
I don’t know what level his English needs to be at to satisfy him, but he probably wants nothing short of mastery. He cut back on how much he slept to improve at League of Legends, but that means he doesn’t have much else to cut at this point. The Time-Turner device is only available in the world of wizards after all. It didn’t take long for him to adjust to us, though, so perhaps Team Dignitas will find other ways to communicate.
We dawdled around too much throughout the day, so we only got to explore the Universal Studios official tour and the Jurassic Park zone after Harry Potter. During the tour, they give us a brief peek into how sets are built for movies, and it felt like I was getting two tours at once. Both the magic behind the movies and the magic behind Ssumday and Team Dignitas’ end of the season surge.
When it comes to pro players, what fans typically see is a surface level portrayal of what’s really going on. Sometimes behind the façade is just plastic. Sometimes there isn’t anything behind it — just space where rooms and pipes and furniture could go. It is at once the absence of and the potential for a thing. Which is the excitement and the fear that comes as Ssumday’s English continues to improve.
As he struts around with his owl shaped backpack, there’s a part of him that still embodies the playful spirit of a child. One with a big sweet tooth and an even bigger heart. But his interior is a lot more complicated than that. Maybe he can’t express himself fully to English speaking fans just yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
“I don’t even know what I’d do with more free time,” he said. “Maybe I’d go to the movies. Maybe go explore new places. Maybe date — I want to find someone you look at and you find yourself smiling.”
The last ride of the day — his favorite — was a river raft adventure to escape a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The king of all beasts. At the end of it was a big drop that Ssumday admits was taller than he expected. But as the water from the ride dripped over him, he simply laughed and said, “It’s raining!” This, perhaps, a welcome change of pace from the Californian sun. And not just a change of pace in the weather, but in how his time is spent. It’s just one day away from League of Legends. But it’s one with a physical playground — with water and steel and breathing people. One in which a smile is the only language anyone needs.
Kien Lam is a writer for Lolesports. You can find more awful great jokes and commentary on his Twitter.