Breaking the board: the rise of female Go players in Korea
pdf: article Rise of korean female player
link article; rise of korean female player
Kang, J., Song, H., Kim, S. et al. Breaking the board: the rise of female Go players in Korea. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11,
A scientific paper on the recent rise of female player in korea
Very interesting!!
Very interesting indeed. 
I hope that we will one day reach a point in intellectual sports (where things like physical abilities do not matter) where the male/female leagues will be unified, thus combining the prizes of both leagues and effectively increasing the income of everyone involved, giving a realistic solution to one of the problems presented in the paper (the prospect of financial sustainability).
After reading the paper I think that the female league are for now, at least, a very good way to increase the financial sustainability and attractivness of this carrer path, it’s a very pro active direction from the Korean association. I hope they put more effort and money to attract chinese female player in China.. there such a good potential there it’s a shame there are so few tournament .
Oh, yes, for now there needs to be some differentiation for marketing and promotion reasons, that’s why I said that I hope that we will reach soon a point where this will not be needed. Once that point of sustainability is reached it will be to the benefit of everyone involved to unify the leagues and rankings.
Even in chess they are not there yet (only 42 out of 1600+ GMs are women according to google search), but once that number goes around 10% they should probably try unifying their leagues. After all, larger prizes usually means more professional interest.
If you’d like an analogy, it is like planting a new tree. It doesn’t make sense to plant it underneath the big tree, but you should probably put it in an seedbed. Once it grows up where it can withstand the wind, then you plant it in the field where the other trees are. You cannot wait for it to grow as big as the other trees to do that though. Eventually the benefitial closed environment of the seedbed, will turn into constraining liabilities.
“Unifying the leagues” just means suppressing the women’s league. It doesn’t mean that current sponsor money for women’s competitions will go to the open league. Like if you are a car manufacturer that sells 10 million of model A and 1 million of model B, if you stop producing model B you won’t sell 11 million of model A.
Why would they not though? 
First of all sponsors are usually there to gain something as well, usually advertisement and social credit for their brands and products. They can get that (and more) in a unified league, so why would they not support a new unified league?
That is true, but sports are not the same as a manufacturing factory (and cars in particular are a bad example since different cars have different target groups of buyers, even within fans of the same car manufacturing brand).
Sporting events are based around viewership and are not about the sales of a tangible product made from a factory.
If there is a game league with X viewers for the men and a game league with Y viewers for the women, if those combine, the viewers will most probably combine as well, since the viewers:
a) Watch the game because they enjoy it
b) Want to see their favorite players play the game
and
c) Like to enjoy a new challenge for the players and game they like.
(and example like that could be the ABA-NBA merger back in 1976 - not only the fans kept watching, but the stars of both leagues remained and competed with each other eventually creating a better league)
So, nothing really changes for the worse from the part of the viewers or the sponsors.
On the contrary you have a better product/league for everyone involved:
– The pros are getting more money (the men will get a slight raise compared to their current winnings while the women will see a larger increase in winnings).
– The sponsors are getting more viewers and more exposure for their products.
– The viewers are getting a league with stars from both male and female leagues.
Therefore, if that was ever achieved it is a win-win-win situation for everyone involved.
I already made it clear that I do not suggest that this should/could happen now (for either Chess or Go), but I expressed my hope that the appropriate time will come when it will be possible, so that there is the optimal conditions for everyone involved, thus I fail to see where the alleged/supposed “suppresion” comes from.
The comparison is not valid. In go, women already compete in all competitions where men participate. It’s just that there are additional women-only competitions, so more opportunities for spectators to watch games.
Oh, I see. So what I was talking about has already happened.
My mistake then.
I didn’t know that since I occasionally only watch video reviews of pro games and have never looked into the whole system and how the pro tournament/leagues work (I’ve even stopped watching football and basketball and I never watch any streams in general, so I have “tuned out” of all kinds of pro sports for more than 10 years).
Additional leagues for women then are obviously a good idea.
Well I am not sure if that’s the case in every country (as of today). If Rui Neiwai moved to Korea in her time, she said that was because she couldn’t access the male pro world in Japan (source: go world interview) But maybe it changed?
oh I understand better your remarks now !
Yes now, all league and competition are men and women, plus women only league and competition. Basically in the main league/competition every professional can be admitted, the only criteria is your level of play to advance or to be selected. For example Choi Jeong in Korean (n1 female player at that time) was the runner up in the 2022 Samsung cup , one of the main international competitions.
And in Korea you have many team event or competition, like the gentleman and lady league when women pro and senior pro players play against eachother, or the national junior team against the national women team … or a blitz competition with senior professional, women professional and high level amateurs…
So actually if you watch Baduk TV, women player are quite visible and you can see a lot of exciting matches like Lee Chang Hoo against Kim Eun Ji (she is 18year old, n°1 female player in Korea and in the world, n°18 in the main Korean ranking (men+women))
You can see women in the Oza tournament for exemple.
The reason why Rei Naiwei could not participate in Japanese pro matches, we are not particularly sure about the reason, but from what we do know, it likely have nothing to do with Rei’s gender (not directly), and Japanese matches also open to all pros, and no male only tournaments (even women’s only tournament formed later than most main titles in recent decades, way later after Rei’s stay in Japan). There was a “rumor” that it is the “women pros” in Japan rejected Rei’s participants, but from what I can find, a lot of Japanese older women pros denied such rumor. (what is certain was that there is a formal rejection from one of the Nihonkiin’s board members at the time to Rei personally, even if lots of pros closer to Rei supported her, she became like a student to Go Seigen after all).
And she didn’t go to Korea after her stay in Japan, she went to US, and “representing” AGA for a few international tournaments, and stayed in US for a few years (1996 to 1999), and it was Jimmy Cha who was in the US promoting baduk invited her to Korea.
I know she stay a bit in USA in between but did you read the go world article? It’s kind of reference because written by herself on her go career. And she was refused to play in the main tournaments with men in Japan. The official reason of her rejection was then “she’s too strong for a foreigner”.
Anyway I can’t get that article anymore. If anyone has the digital copies, he may contribute here.
Over the decades, Rei had given various accounts of this matter, and they changes over the years, as noted in one of the earlier accounts, it was related to women pros in Japan objected her participation (but later many women pros at the time in Japan rejected and denied this, or they were never consulted in this matter). Then later on there were several accounts from Rei said it was the Nihon kiin boards or those in power who afraid she might take the titles, and overshadowed all the women pros in Japan, or that allowing her to participate would open the door for Chinese players to join the Japanese tournaments (in the 1990s, Japanese title tournaments have the most prize pools, even today, still has one of the highest title prize). And this came from her hearing what other pros who supported her.
The official reason that we know of given by Nihonkiin had nothing to do with gender or how strong she was, but that she had her professional ranks issued by Chinese Weiqi Association, and without the permission and assignments from CWA, CWA pros cannot participate in games elsewhere.
Although the consideration behind the rejections I would assume go beyond some objections from CWA, but we simply cannot be sure (none of the board members from Nihon kiin had publicly stated anything about this, nor from CWA), and only accounts from Rei, and others close to her, and often years, or even decades later.