Speed Baduk - Volume 7

The author wrote The Speed Baduk series, from the beginner to elementary level, over a period of one and half years. Meanwhile he couldn't find a good series in progressive order which went from the beginner to advanced level. Therefore the students didn't have the proper studying materials, so they often ended up studying things that were too easy or too difficult.
This is a common problem amng students who want to study thoroughly in a Baduk Academy. These kids, who came from Baduk schools, after studying for 2 - 4 years are quite similar. Considering the time they spent studying life and death and capturing races, their reading skills are insufficient. When they are faced with a problem, they can't immediately feel where they should start from or what the key point is. Moreover although they can review games for a long time their understanding of opening and haengma theories is inadequate.
The kids, who have been studying in Baduk school for a year, should start to improve their reading skill genuinely and study the concepts of the opening and haengma. However, if we check the teaching materials, there are many parts that are lacking. There is doubt about the difficulty of the life and death and capturing race problems. Also the problems are not organized in a progressive order. The studying material for the opening and haengma is even worse. Since the proper teaching materials are not present, it is more difficult for the teacher to explain things to the student, which makes the education system less effective.
The author has worked in Baduk school, where he experienced that the length of the training is getting longer and the teaching materials are not good enough. in this situation the kids are confused about what they have learnt from their experiences and from the poor teaching materials, so improving their level is more difficult than it should be. From the teacher's point of view this is truly frustrating. It is the same in every field, but in Baduk if the basics are not enough a large difference will be noticed later.
To solve this problem the author made the beginner series, which helps to cultivate the reading skill, strengthen the student in life and death problems and to get a clear view of the haengma and opening's general idea. Moreover in the intermediate series it explains what the value of each move is, so it becomes possible to decide which move is bigger or smaller.
Even if the problems are getting more difficult gradually, I hope it will be easy to countermeasure this, because the problems in each chapter are arranged in a good order.
At the end, I would like to say thank you to the people who are using The Speed Baduk series to teach and help the students to improve faster. I feel, it is my duty to make an easy education system for Baduk, which is originally hard to learn, so I will continue to work towards this goal.
November 2008
Sung-Rae KIM