South Korea is the unofficial Starcraft capital of the world. There are two television channels dedicated to the coverage of Starcraft leagues starting in 2002. Consider ESPN, which until a few years ago only had ESPN and ESPN 2-- for all sports in america. It's a big deal. Sponsors for the teams in the leagues include Samsung among other major Korean companies. In April of this year, it was revelaed that a number of high ranking players and gaming officials were implicated in a ring of match fixes and thrown games. This scandal has been compared to the Black Sox of baseball and shocked the esports world. On June 9th 11 players were banned from esports for life and in October sentences were handed out, primarily punishing programmers and ex programmers for gambling treatment.
Thanks to Wikipedia and TeamLiquid for sources. Also, Kotaku.
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