Them's fighting words!!

For better or for worse, my blog post about Seon-Woo “Infiltration” Lee, and the myriad of odd and upsetting events that upended his professional gaming career, is my most popular and widely shared work. Whenever I get a notification about a spike in my low readership, there’s a roughly 97% chance it’s related to that particular piece. As such, I feel compelled to comment on a recently released video, in which Lee attempts to “debunk” the allegations against him from 2017, when he signed a confession to a court of law that he committed assault against his then-wife.

Read more: Infiltration Has a Character Problem, Not a Truth Problem

But frankly, talking about the video would be redundant; Lee rarely covers new ground, instead retreading his previously public takes into a more digestible format. Instead I’ll focus on one new development, which floored me a bit. Amongst an old claim that his ex-wife plotted to release this information directly to destroy his life, Lee now asserts he knows the identity of a co-conspirator of hers: a United States citizen and FGC regular who is a relative of his ex-wife. To hear Lee tell it, this man was not only behind the mass release of information around him, but also responsible for sending messages to Panda Global, Lee’s sponsor at the time, in order to get the story started. Lee goes as far as to share the person’s name, what town and state they’re from, and their social media profile, along with stating — many, many times — that they are a “criminal” for what they’ve done.

It’s a stunning claim, made all the more shocking by the “evidence” Lee has that this person did slander on an unprecedented scale. What might that be, you ask?

A single DM from this man to a former partner of his asking her to get in touch with Lee’s ex-wife.

No, really. That’s it.

Suffice to say, I think that this, above all else, demonstrates the issues Lee is going to have in attempting to rehabilitate his character. Chiefly, it’s the lack of character, as demonstrated over and over again these past few years, that is his roadblock. While I would say that blithely calling out a person by their name and geolocation for a crime of which there is little evidence for is proof enough of recent poor character, Lee has luckily taken more tangible action to demonstrate it earlier this year.

Here is Lee, pictured to the right in a blue shirt, at Evolution 2024. The same Evolution tournament which, with much ballyhoo, privately told him that he was banned from attending the tournament for the foreseeable future in 2022. Apparently, Lee believed that he had run out the clock on his ban and was going to attend, if only as a spectator. You can see here, detailed exhaustively by Lee himself, that his account is banned on the website Start.GG, where you register for tournaments, so he made a dummy account in order to get around it. A flagrant violation of the terms of service of one of the communities’ most trusted platforms, and a blatant disrespect to the wishes of the organizers and staff of the communities’ most celebrated tournament. And for what?

Because he wanted to, and fuck you.

The thing about character is it has many forms, but they all ultimately point in the same direction. Whether it’s taking a sponsor’s money for a newcomer’s bracket while filling the competition in favor of his already-experienced students, or baselessly accusing a fellow community member of crimes and conspiratorial plots against him, or attending a tournament that had made it abundantly clear they did not want him there, we can see the extent of Lee’s character: a paranoid bully who feels he has the right to do whatever he wants because it is owed to him.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade or so, it should be very clear that the tolerance for poor character is at an all-time low in these FG communities. I would go out on a limb and say people in general have an extremely low tolerance for those who would put themselves and what they want above the wants of others. Whether that’s not paying out money or trampling over boundaries, tournaments and organizers feel compelled now more than ever to exclude those who exhibit that kind of behavior from their events and communities. This is not without its flaws, but generally speaking, the idea is that respect for others is non-negotiable. Clearly, Lee didn’t get the memo.

I agree that the truth should matter. If Lee was legitimately falsely accused of doing something that he didn’t, he should have full recourse to combat that perception publicly. When Panda Global did their rigorous analysis of the list of smears that were sent their way, they were quick to sort out the more salacious allegations from the real ones. And, yes, it should go without saying that in addition to the truth, there was a lot of horseshit mixed into the allegations sent to Panda Global that should be condemned. But at the heart of it, Lee was fired from Panda Global, an unbiased 3rd party, because of what they found out, which was damning. Lee, coyly, never denies that something happened, it just “wasn’t that bad.” Funny, that.

But even then, even then, many were willing to take a second chance with him after about a year of (somewhat) silence. This is another snag in his alleged road to redemption; he didn’t get banned from anything until 2022, which was years after this news dropped. There is a chance that his ban was solely due to those matters —and for what it’s worth, Evo and the other USA tournaments did themselves no favors by being vague regarding this—but there’s no evidence of that. All we do know is that since 2019, when he returned to Evo after a year off, there were zero issues by organizers for him playing. What possibly could have occurred during that gap of time that would make them suddenly change their mind?

You’ll never know, because Lee has zero interest in addressing that.

Even now, with attending Evo after he’s been banned, there doesn’t really seem to be any acknowledgement that it’s wrong to go somewhere where you’ve been told you’re not wanted. In fact, he’s righting a wrong, so he’s the one who’s just in the end, no matter what he has to do. Zero accountability, zero reflection, just me, me, me. 

I’m reminded of him raving about people who would accuse him of doing something unethical in regards to his sponsored tournament. Calling them “motherfuckers” and people were just jealous that he spent 10 years building up the Korean FGC and how dare they take advantage of his magnanimity. It’s easy to get the feeling that he really believed no one who would question his motives could do so in good faith, because he was so obviously a great person.

If Lee’s intent is to reignite his professional career, he’s woefully misguided. Not only does he have nothing to say about the allegations of bracket rigging or going to Evo unwanted, he clearly thinks that the only reason anyone ever believed he has poor character is that he was lied about maliciously, purely out of spite. People, evidently the “haters”, wanted a salacious story and they got it, at his expense. Somehow, this doesn’t strike me as the words or actions of someone who believes they need to earn their way back into these communities by rebuilding a trust that has been broken. If anything, it just sounds like he wants what he wants, and he doesn’t care that it’s unwanted and disrespectful.

Sound familiar?

Peace and love!