Do you know of anyone who, while growing up, had a mind to make a living out of being a pro-athlete? I myself wanted to be a pro-gamer at first, but ended up as a programmer instead, at least for a while. Well, one of the most impressive eSports athletes from South Korea is in the limelight this time around, where he has been granted a US visa. Kim “Violet” Dong Hwan, has been attempting to bring his competitive StarCraft 2 career to the US for quite some time already, but to date his visa applications have been turned down pretty often, resulting in an extremely sparse tournament schedule in this part of the world.
South Korea has a mandatory military service for all males of an eligible age, and unless he received a US visa, it looked like Violet would have to retire early from his “love”. Good thing he has been granted a US visa at last, after Hwan’s manager contacted Blizzard Entertainment (StarCraft 2’s publisher), Twitch.tv and Machinima execs over a seven month period to send a 500-page application to immigration services in an effort to get that visa approved. As the end result, a P-1A pro-athlete visa was issued to Hwan aka Violet, which is the second time such an event has happened.