Unlike famous players such as Cho Hun-hyeon, Lee Chang-ho, Lee Se-dol, and Shin Jin-seo, who even non-Korean people have heard of at least once,
Seo Bong-su is a knight that is not known to anyone except those who are interested in baduk or are older adults.
He was clearly one of the top-class knights in the country, and he won many titles and won the Eungssi Cup. Although his head-to-head record was about 1:3, he was the only knight who was able to be a good teammate with Jo Hoon-hyun in his prime.
Although it was difficult for him to be considered the ruler of the era or to be included in the main line of Baduk, people who know Seo Bong-su’s career almost evaluated him as a genius on the level of Cho Hun-hyun and Lee Chang-ho.
In Baduk, natural skills are important, but early education is also very important, and it usually starts in the lower grades of elementary school, or as early as before school. Jo Hoon-hyeon and Lee Chang-ho started playing Baduk at the age of 4, and Lee Se-dol and Shin Jin-seo started playing Baduk at the age of 5.
However, even though Seo Bong-su originated from his family, he started playing Baduk in the first year of middle school, and he learned Baduk at a very late age.
Moreover, unlike other knights who entered the game as students or in-house students and received systematic elite education from their teachers and instructors, Seo Bong-su studied Baduk on his own by playing baduk with the guests of the origin and reading monthly baduk magazines.
And after studying like that, I passed the professional exam at the age of 17. Although he was overshadowed by Cho Hoon-hyun’s entry into the game at the age of 9, the time it took him to actually start playing baduk and become a professional player was similar. I also studied alone.
But there is something even more surprising.
Although it is a very old classic, it is a book written during the Southern Song Dynasty in China, and is so famous that it is still considered a must-read for Baduk practitioners and enthusiasts.
In particular, when it comes to trick solving and life and death problems, Goat-level responsibility can be said to be the ‘standard of mathematics’.
There is virtually no one in Korea, China, and Japan who did not read this and become a professional journalist, but surprisingly, Seo Bong-su did not know the existence of this book even after becoming a professional journalist.
There is a famous anecdote in which, long after he joined the club, he saw someone holding a manifestation technique and studying life and death, and asked what it was. Everyone around him was shocked, and he lamented, “Oh, I can’t believe there was such a good book.”
Since no one since Seo Bong-soo has reached that level by studying baduk on his own, even though he did not stand in the main line, among baduk enthusiasts, Seo Bong-soo is highly regarded.