The Seoul Dynasty is owned by Gen.G (Generation Gamer) that has is in a unique position being both an NA and KR org. Gen.G in North America has esports such as Fortnite, CS:GO, NBA 2K and Valorant. They also used to have an NA Apex Legends team and a Call of Duty team which has been disbanded. In Korea their esports include, Overwatch (OWL and contenders), League of Legends, PUBG and an upcoming Valorant Korea team. In each region, they have streamers, content creators and most importantly, fans. All the fans love the esports and players, but the cultural aspects can be sometimes hard to bridge.
Original Design
Gen.G was one of the organizations that came out with a statement about Black Lives Matter after George Floyd’s death. In solidarity, a BLM patch was added to the Seoul Dynasty’s Jerseys on June 26. While this garnered much positive attention from NA fans who also loved the symbolic design, the organization received criticism from some of the Korean fans for the design. It should be noted that it was just the Seoul Dynasty jerseys that had these patches and it was not yet rolled out for the other teams.
서울 다이너스티는 젠지 US와 뜻을 함께합니다.
Seoul Dynasty stands with @GenG US.
BLACK LIVES MATTER#TigerNation #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/6xbk2BtN1a
— Seoul Dynasty 🐯 (@SeoulDynasty) June 27, 2020
The original design of the BLM patches mimicked, 태극기, the South Korean National Flag. This hit a cord with the Korean fans who felt that there should’ve been more caution when using the South Korean National Flag. Gen.G listened to the fans. They took the old design down and promised to come back with a BLM design that purely represents the BLM.
The New Design
We stand together.#BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/GE1y7xUDt2
— Gen.G Esports (@GenG) August 5, 2020
On August 4, Gen.G tweeted out a picture fo the NBA2K squad in their jerseys that had a new BLM patch on the shoulder. It was sleek, simple, and to the point just as Gen.G had earlier promised. It wasn’t until the next day that Seoul Dynasty specifically tweeted out a response to the new patches.
*Update Aug 6, it seems as if the Korean rosters will have a different patch design than the one found on the NBA2K jerseys. The League of Legend team had a picture tweeted out which showed the a new BLM patch on their jerseys. These patches are much more closely related to the original design as both have the panther and tiger half and half design integrated.
The Statement
#BlackLivesMatter https://t.co/UnDRBddttU pic.twitter.com/NqQn6xtbHB
— Seoul Dynasty 🐯 (@SeoulDynasty) August 5, 2020
In the statement the team apologized again for how they expressed their support for the BLM movement by carelessly using the Taegukgi design for the first iteration of the patches. They then explain after discussing the design with many people they changed the patch, which was first implemented on the NBA2K jerseys. The new patch will be added to all Gen.G teams and the Seoul Dynasty will be at the top of the list to get it. Gen.G stated that they will always be on the side of the players and will work to support as well as protect them. Then they closed out that the organization values and listens to the fans’ feed back and will try to advance more as a global esport company.
Starting August 5th all of the Gen.G teams and Seoul Dynasty will also wear the BLM patch on their jerseys. They are bridging the regional gaps to stand together and in solidarity with the movement and the NBA2K team.
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