Politicians and game of Go

In the Three Kingdoms Period of Korea, King Jangsu of Goguryeo sends a Buddhist monk to Baekje after hearing that King Gaero of Baekje was crazy about the game of Go. The monk, who was a master Go player, approached the Baekje king to egg him on to start a large-scale construction work. Taking advantage of the situation, in which the costly construction project put Baekje people into poverty, King Jangsu invades Baekje in 475. King Gaero ran away, only to be killed by his own people. The record in Samguk Sagi (The History of the Three Kingdoms) shows that the game of Go is fatal enough to cause a country to fall.

In Korea, there have been many politicians fond of Go. Former Presidents Rhee Syngman and Chun Doo-hwan held ranks of honorary 9 dan and 8 dan, respectively. Before ex-Prime Minister Kim Jong-pil had a military coup with former President Park Chung-hee in 1961, Kim played the game at various Go clubs in Seoul to keep a low profile until the coup was carried out. A Go maniac who founded a championship named after his pen name Unjeong, Kim also used the game for diplomacy, playing it with Ichiro Ozawa, the then head of Japan’s Liberty Party.

Among current policians, the best Go player is arguably Lee In-je, a lawmaker of the ruling Saenuri Party who has a rank of Amateur 6 dan. Won Yoo-chul, the party’s floor leader, is chairman of a parliamentary Go club. He successfully recruited famous professional Go player Cho Hun-hyun as a candidate for proportional representation. Ahn Chul-soo, the leader of the People’s Party, is also known for his love of Go. When he was a university student, he self-taught the game by reading 50 books on Go and played against an Amateur 10-kyu friend, only to suffer a humiliating defeat. He must have realized the difference between theory and practice. Now an Amateur 3-dan player, Ahn has quit the game, saying the hobby took too much of his time.

When South Korean Go champion Lee Se-dol had his first match against artificial intelligence AlphaGo, many politicians, including the Saenuri floor leader and Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon, visited the venue. Some politicians jokingly say that it might be a good idea to put AlphaGo in charge of their parties’ candidate nomination committees for the upcoming parliamentary elections. Go and politics have many things in common in terms of strategy. In fact, many Korean political terms originated from the game. The virtue of Go lies not in the victory or defeat but in the win-win spirit. The game champions a spirit that the Korean political circles need the more than anything else.

정성희기자 shchung@donga.com