Seoul — HE confessed to feeling "more nervous than usual" as he waited for his comeback fight to begin, his fingers fiddling inside a hand warmer to ward off the winter chill seeping through the walls of the coliseum.
The Emperor knew he had to keep his fingers loose.
A crowd of more than 1,000 people was waiting in the arena, with 1.78 million more watching over the Internet and on TV to see what those fingers could do, or, more to the point, whether they had gone cold in the five months since he disappeared from public view.
He is in the air force now. Conscripted. Snatched away from his calling and from the fans who revered him for leading their sport -- no, their passion -- to respectability.
In the crowd, teenage girls squealed. Preteen boys, tugging baffled-looking parents along, craned their necks for a better look.
It was like Elvis getting out of the Army.
The Emperor was back.
For every teenage boy whose dad hollered to turn off that stupid video game because it'll rot your brain and ruin your life, Lim Yo-hwan is a god: The 27-year-old is the most famous professional gamer in South Korean electronic sports, and his dominance has earned him hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in salary, prize winnings and commercial endorsements.
Lim's skill at playing the futuristic battle game StarCraft has turned him into the first superstar of the e-sports era, South Korea's Babe Ruth of gaming. Usually referred to by his nicknames Boxer (short for his game ID SlayerS_'BoxeR') or the Emperor, he has won more games of professional StarCraft than anyone else in South Korea, becoming a celebrity in a country so serious about gaming that it boasts professional leagues and \o7two\f7 cable channels televising games 24/7.
His good looks and easy smile have made him a sex symbol in a "sport" supposedly the domain of geeks. He wrote his biography -- "(Try and Be) As Crazy As Me" -- at 25.
Lim's life was charmed until the South Korean military stepped in last year to remind him that the armed forces are not a mosaic of digital dots and simulated explosions but real battles, waged by men and women, not Firebats, Wraiths and Zerglings.
Like every eligible South Korean male, Lim is obliged to put in 27 months of service in a military stuck in a 54-years-and-counting standoff with North Korea. In his mid-20s, he could put off his compulsory commitment no longer. He got his draft notice, went through basic training and was assigned to the air force in October.
