I remember watching my first WCS EU/NA broadcasts and wondering why the casters called the people local to the region. I soon learned that for the StarCraft scene it meant any non-Korean pro and came with the connotation of inferiority.At that time in StarCraft II, few foreigners made it to the top of a bracket, and even fewer made it to the finals. Every game vs a Korean was a nail biter for those who wished to see a "Foreign Hope" emerge. A fabled champion who would rise up and smite their Korean foes, From what I've read of Brood War, there were but an elite few hew ever took maps off Koreans, let alone defeated them in an entire series. While both games have had their foreign heroes and hopes, at the end of the day it has been the Koreans who held dominion.Why? Is it stereotypical Asian discipline? Are school systems in Korea more nurturing of a mind that's adept at mastering real time strategy games than those in America? A few years into it all, I settled on the idea that Western players were lazy and undisciplined compared to their Korean counterparts (an opinion that infuriated and offended many).It took me a while to realize their place at the top isn't as abstract as work ethic, natural prowess or a side effect of kimchi fermenting the mind into an APM machine. While discipline and hard work are critical to performance in SC, the Koreans benefit from other factors. You'll often hear folks talk about infrastructure, and it has been a major factor in their dominance for nearly two decades. Team houses built to nurture talent and skill in a controlled environment, major sponsors making this and more possible, limited travel requirements to compete, and other amenities lead to a healthy, thriving ecosystem that drove fierce competition and forced player's to continuously improve. Koreans have had a better gym than foreigners, and their gains showed it.Things have changed.Foreigners are better, in larger numbers, than they ever have been. The forums can argue until they're blue in the face about why or how and the state of the scene (and they do from time to time), but the era when lower tier Korean pros could handily discard the best foreigners is gone. Players like Neeb and Elazer have evicted Korean elite from the later stages of tournaments. Their peers have ensured a foreigner in the last three seasons of GSL Code S. While we have yet to see a foreigner to snog a Blizzcon or a GSL trophy, they're a threat and I expect to see a lot of incredible games this weekend.