Photo Credit: Riot Korea (LCK)
The Korean region in League of Legends, the LCK, is widely regarded as the strongest competitive League of Legends community. It comes as no surprise that the past five seasons have been dominated by the Koreans winning all of the World Championships. In fact, Korea has secured both first and second place at Worlds for three years running in addition to five years in a row as world champions. As a result of their numerous successes, Esports watchers should follow this region to see the predominant meta that the Koreans often establish and the top gameplay around the world.
Current Rankings
As of now, the 10 teams in the LCK are quite evenly matched with no one pulling significantly far ahead of the pack. At the top are KT Rolster and KING-ZONE DragonX, both with 7 wins apiece. However KT has suffered 2 losses while KING-ZONE has lost once. Afreeca Freecs hold sole possession of third place with 6 wins and 3 losses while KSV and ROX Tigers trail behind by one game. A surprising name in 6th place tied with Jin Air GreenWings is SK Telecom T1 who had an extremely poor start, but are steadily on the rise again. MVP, KONGDOO MONSTER, and bbq OLIVERS are tied in last with 2 wins each.
Thoughts
One thing to take away from the current rankings in the LCK is that all of the teams are within reaching distance of one another. For example, SK Telecom T1 were experiencing a massive losing streak including losses to bottom teams like MVP. However, they managed to take down KSV, the previous world champions, to end their losing streak and are currently on a winning streak of their own. Just this morning, KING-ZONE DragonX were taken down by last place bbq OLIVERS. One scary thought for the other competitive regions is that with all these teams so close in proximity to each other, will Korea once again dominate the World Championships?