Flash Wolves are off to a hot start at the World Championship, decisively defeating Phong Vu Buffalo and Afreeca Freecs in the first two days of Group Stage competition. Kim “Moojin Moo-Jin continued to impress in the jungle with strong vision control against the Afreeca Freecs and Lee “Spirit” Da-Yoon’s Olaf.

We sat down with Flash Wolves’ Moojin to discuss his first World Championship, his time on Flash Wolves, and his birthday present to Huang “Maple” Yi-Tang.

You’re one of the new players on Flash Wolves so this is your first time at the World Championship with them… and you first World Championship in general. What is that like for you?

The fact that I am in the World Championship, in and of itself, is an honor. And I think that it shows that I’ve harmonized well with the team. Many people know about Flash Wolves and the fact that I’m here with them makes me happy.

You guys are 2-0 at Worlds now and Flash Wolves hasn’t done well at Worlds in a while. What have you done to help them?

The most that I have contributed to my team is making more decisive calls on my own. And I try to — since the prowess of all my teammates is very high — I try to get individual feedback from all of them.

Being the only Korean speaker at Flash Wolves, what has it been like integrating to an all-Mandarin speaking lineup?

In the beginning, we played only in English, but I got a lot of lessons from my translator for 30 minutes each day. In a month or two, I was able to catch all game language with Chinese.

In terms of integrating into Flash Wolves, who has been the most important to helping you join my team?

Everyone helped, but if I had to pick one, it would have to be SwordArt. As you know, SwordArt has really good character and after every game, he would give me a lot of advice and help. Since he also can speak English, he was also one to always talk to me first.

SwordArt was highly ranked above players at this World Championship, above both Mata and Ming. Do you believe that SwordArt is the best support in the world?

Personally, I do agree because his performance right now is truly great.

If you were to say one thing that makes Flash Wolves so good right now… what is it?

If I had to pick one, I think it’s because we all practice really, really hard. But aside from that, I think that every single one of us has great prowess individually.

One last question… yesterday it was Maple’s birthday and I heard that you said that as a birthday present, you would gift him the World Championship? Can you tell me more about that?

It’s not something that I explicitly told to Maple, but when I heard that it was his birthday, I thought to myself since [Flash Wolves] didn’t make it to the finals last year, I would do my best to help them to get to the finals this year and told them that.

Photo: Riot Games