Diary
Placing stones close together helps them support each other and avoid capture. On the other hand, placing stones far apart creates influence across more of the board. A part of the strategic difficulty of the game stems from finding a balance between such conflicting interests.
- Introduction of Go [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)]
A state of equilibrium or equipoise; equal distribution of weight, amount, etc.
- Definition of ‘Balance’ [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/balance]
It was Saturday after the mid-term week. I got up at 6:50 and took a train to Seoul in the early morning. (I am pretty sure that every other student of my school was sleeping at the time!!) It was the first day of the preliminary tournament of LG Cup International Baduk Championship. The venue, KBA building was so crowded with not only Korean players but players from China Japan and Taiwan. Although I didn’t know who they were except a few of well-known players I could tell that they were players that came for the tournament by their serious and somewhat nervous looking expressions. After gladly greeting to other players I sat before the baduk board. Beside the board, there was a white name tag that had my name in it. The silver electronic counting clock was displaying 3 hours and 60 seconds 5 times for each player. There, an empty wooden board was looking at me. It seemed asking me without making any sound ‘Who are you?’ It felt as if I was a total stranger there.
It has been one and a half months since I became a college student. Compared to my professional career in playing baduk, which has been more than 5 years, it's such a short period. Nevertheless, I feel more comfortable at school. Just like being at home. For the first time in my life, I am fully attending a school without making excuses for playing baduk. Instead, I skipped 3 tournaments in March and two more in April. It was also first to sacrifice baduk for something else as baduk has always been the top priority of my life. Baduk is something very complex to me. It's not just a game, profession or specialty. Since I was 6, I was always with him (Mr. Baduk). He brought me up, made me laugh, happy, cry, sad, frustrated and even love. Yes. There certainly was a time that I loved him so much. Because he was so jealous, I couldn't do anything else seriously but concentrate on him. Yet as I came to a college, things dramatically changed.
Balance is one of the most important concepts in baduk. Now I think that the same is true with life. Although I have decided to build a new career in a business school, sitll I am, and will be a professeional baduk player. I envy Hye-yeon's ability in managing both playing baduk and studying in a university. I will find my way though. I will find a good balance point between baduk and college!
Balancing school and baduk =/ I'm going to have to do that here soon probably. I don't know what I'm going to do, and I really want to be a pro. ;.;
First, it's very nice to know that You are still thinking of baduk fans, eager to read something new aboud baduk world, in English.
Also, thank You for this nice essay that provides insight into the pro baduk world, which seems to be so distant to us, as distant as the end of visible Universe - so close given the view through our powerful telescopes, yet so unimaginable far away that light has to travel to us for billions of years.
Yet, happy we are that the words from Your baduk world travel to us through enormous vastness of Internet space in just a few billions of nanoseconds.
>There, an empty wooden board was looking at me.
This reminds me of walking into my room once and seeing empty baduk pan (board) on the floor (at that time my reading and feeling for a good move was much better when the board was on the floor). I can't find words to explaing what happened at that short moment, but just upon seeing the empy board, I got terryfied by its vastness as if I were left alone somewhere in the interstellar space.
Is baduk pan really a representation of the Universe? At that moment, I felt not just that, but that baduk pan IS as vast as Universe itself.
Also, as if I would be scared where to go if found myself disoriented somewhere in the interstellar space, at that moment I was terrified of how lonely and helplessly one stone would be on such an endless-like board. Well, there's one more reason why in the old times, before the game actually starts, there were some B and W stones already on the board - so that the new, played ones, wouldn't feel lonely and scared of the enormous vastness of the board 
Also, when we start to study baduk with a teacher, usually there are some handicap stones on the board. Those stones might represent our parents or family in general in the real life, and are to support us and be our guidance while we are weak and little. When we grow up, we can walk through life on our own, like when we 'grow up' in baduk and don't need handicap stones - but rather give them to the younger ones who we start to teach baduk to.
Thus, is baduk a game of Life, a representation of Life, a representation of the Universe, a means of achieving the Supreme wisdom, something else, or just another game?
I guess that one can know only when gets to the Light source
