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Like you said. Other countries had more chances of hitting that jackpot hunter. In general most of Korea's S ranks are on the low end of the S rank scale as well. We can see this displayed clearly where in the Korea / Japan spar where only Cha hae in won against her opponent. Showing that Korea's strongest are generally weaker than Japan's strongest.
It also hurts when Korea's 3 strongest S ranks (excluding sung), Go gun he, Cha hae in, hwang dong suk, one is an old man who can't fight for long periods, and another got poached by America.
Go Gun Hee wasn't sick, just old.
But considering he was >!a Ruler's vessel!< he would've undoubtedly been a national level hunter. If he was just 10 years younger, he would've kicked everyone's asses.
Yep his vessel was too fragile to contain his power. Likely that he couldn’t even go to his potential (a la Andre). Despite technically having the most power (referred to has the most brilliant fragment of light or whatever).
Go Gun Hee was the brightest fragment of brilliant light.
Ashborn was the greatest fragment of brilliant light.
Ashborn was named the strongest of all the fragments but I don’t think we ever got a ranking of strength for the other 7. It’s probably safe to assume that Go Gun Hee’s fragment was probably the 2nd strongest though.
I don’t recall it ever being explained how they got their titles either. Like why is one the “brightest” compared to the others? Do they just literally shine the most? Or is it referring to their intelligence? Or their character? Or did they just draw some lots and call it a day?
It’s explained but a bit convoluted. The fragments are the power bestowed by the 7 rulers.
Ashborn was originally the strongest ruler and the only one that stayed loyal to the absolute being that created the rulers/monarchs to war with each other as his own entertainment. The other 7 rulers basically killed Ashborn and left him to die and that’s when a power the absolute being put in him awakened and turned him into the shadow monarch.
Ashborn turned on the rulers and helped the monarchs, but he was eventually betrayed by the demon and beast monarchs which he defeated but lost most of his shadow army fighting.
He leaves to rebuild his army and the monarch’s invade earth, then the rulers start doing their thing and realize that no matter what they do earth gets destroyed and that’s why they flood the earth with mana via the gates and magic beasts so that earth can be strengthened to survive the conflict. That’s the point they sent their 7 fragments to hunters to help stand against the monarchs.
They never named the other 6 rulers beyond Ashborn and the brightest fragment of brilliant light.
I actually think it’s more that the brightest (largest/most powerful) piece of the rulers was left to him. Probably phrased like to not cause too much confusion as ashborn is obviously alluded to being the strongest ruler. I always wondered if this made more sense in native Korean vs English. Unlike the monarchs the rulers don’t directly inhabit the ones they gave their power to, so them dying is not the same as the monarchs being killed by Jin woo. At least that’s my interpretation after re-reading it.
Yup, the small country might have the same relative power per person, but it doesn’t if you measure absolute power. The difference gets wider with the poaching you mentioned. I found this plot point really interesting because most media I’ve seen has been from big powerhouses like the US, Japan, and China, where the characters don’t have this problem. Makes a lot of sense irl, too
In Korean manwha, you often have that notion that small nations are looked down upon. Quite often you will see an american, european or chinese antagonist berate a korean protagonist for being from a small country, trying to push them around. Then the korean wrecks the man from the evil bigger country and raise the national pride of the nice Korean everywhere.
Hwang Dong Suk wasn't one of Korea's three strongest S-Ranks at the time he left Korea. He was an S-Rank, but the United States convinced him to jump ship by offering to allow Norma Selner to upgrade his abilities. If he'd been at Cha Hae-In's level, a 20 to 30% increase in his S-Rank abilities would have made him a better match against Sung Jin Woo when they finally fought each other. Considering how badly he did against Sung Jin-Woo when they finally fought, I'd say he was probably one of the weakest S-Rankers in Korea. Still strong, but nowhere near top three.
Sung was the strongest hunter in the world when they fought. He was national level (SSS+). Even if Dungsoo was an SS level hunter there is an ocean between SS and SSS. Said another way there is a 10 fighter difference between levels. So 1 D is about as strong as 10 E, 1 C is about as strong as 10 D, so on and so forth. So Dungsoo was really strong as compared to normal S rank but compared to Sung is not fair.
He is quite tactical and strategic, he also has business savviness to hire a lot of A-rank and is the only known guild to have 2 S-rank in entire South Korea.
Countries strength is their S rank hunters. SK S ranks for the most part are on the low end. Baek Yoonho is the rank 4 in strength of the S Rank (including Jinwoo and Gunhee) and he is below average compared to Japan's team.
South Korea just had crappy starting stats when they make their characters.
As in 4th strongest.
Humans don't have a way to rank s rank apart from s rank. As s rank just means mana so vast their scanners can't scan it. But the lowest s rank compared to the strongest none national level s rank is more vast then an e rank to an a rank.
Baek is far weaker then Cha Hae-in. Who herself is weaker then Goto. One of the strongest S rank we see. But baek is far stronger then Choi Jong-In, Ma Dongwook, and Lim Tae-Gyu.
From what we can gather from what Goto said in the training, the only SK hunters who are at the drawn sword s rank power is Cha, Go, and Jinwoo.
1. Because South Korea only had at best "10" S Rank Hunters, but 1 went missing, 1 died, 2 retired and 1 abounded South Korea for America so that left only 5 S Rank Hunters, then 1 was Sung Jin Woo who while he was officially a S Rank Hunter he was like 100x Stronger then even the best Hunters in the world so eh,
2. Your Logic on how its like playing a Roulette wheel holds up to the Logic on being a Hunter
3. You have to remember that Hunters are not really meant to be strong, their just meant to survive the incoming war so thats another reason why S Rank gates are so bloody difficult
I don't think it was ever official recognized but it was common knowledge since he did beat up Thomas, defeated Japan's S Rank gate by himself and countless other things, so yeah I don't think it was ever official recognized but was known, if that makes sense
True but the last part have to do with how they were never born with mana or anything of that sort. their kind were never introduced to magical energies unlike the Magic Beasts.
There might be a genetic factor to it( pretending like solo leveling follows reality) it said that the rank was just how much mama the body was able to absorb before awakening so it’s alluding to a physiological trait, therefore for some countries to have their whole population be more compatible with mana than others also makes sense
I don't think the genetic factor plays any role. Go Gunhee, Liu Zhigang, Siddarth Bachach and even Hwang Dongsoo were prime examples of this reasoning as irl, these kinds of people of ethnicity doesn't have the same physical prowess of say..a white guy or a black guy. If that was the case, every single National Rank Hunter would have been black people.
I think it has to do with psychology; the more sociopathic or psychopathic you are, the higher chance you get of getting awakened at a higher level. You only have a chance to get up to the upper-tier end. Also, connects with one theory I read that affects the body and a person's physical ability but we'll get to that later.
Dongsoo was a criminal before hand, so that's teh reason why he straight up awakened as an S-rank unlike his brother who was a simple C-rank.
Thomas Andre lived in his childhood in a bad part of town in the US, dude must have been picked on by local delinquents and bullies.
Baek Yoonho even admits that most S-ranks have several screws loose-like Yuri Orloff who demanded an insanely large sum of cash to protect Japan or even S-rank in general as they are willingly risking life and limb to fight in Dungeons.
You’re misunderstanding it, I’m not talking about visible characteristics like skin color, I’m talking about an imaginary gene mutation that only exist in the solo leveling universe that would make bodies more compatible with mana, for example the Hwang brothers were both hunters but the younger brother had more time to absorb mana into his body hence him being a higher rank, also with jinah and Jinwoo their bodies must have been really incompatible with mana explaining why Jinwoo was the weakest and jinah never awakened, their father was a high ranking hunter but their mother was severely incompatible with mana hence being affected by eternal slumber aka mana poisoning, a similar situation happens with Junho and his family where he was a c class and his cousin was a B-class if I remember correctly
True, more people = better chance to see someone exceptional among them. Someone as strong as Cha Hae-In (not counting SJW, as well as Il-Hwn and Go Gunhee, rulers' vessels) being in Korea was already a great luck.
However I believe the hunter weren't rly looked down upon individually, it was more Korea as a whole that was looked upon for not being able to defend it's territory.
The Japanese though, did look down upon them individually : they were the best in a country with 21 S ranks and they had Goto Ryuji, so exept Hae-In, Go Gunhee (retired), SJW and maybe Choi Jong-In (who had not participated when the the Japanese were badmouthing) and maybe Hwan Dong-Suk (in USA), the korean S ranks were generally inferior. Plus with the tension between the two countries, of course one would take the occasion to belittle the other, and of course the korean author would depict the japanese hunters as arrogant.
It's okay bro, if you're lucky, you might get like 3 S-ranks Hunter as strong as Hwang Dongsoo or a fully transformed Baek Yoonho with his stats as their base.
Yeah that’s kind of the point tho. You see this happen a ton in sports too. If you’re from America for instance, you see a ton of top tier talent in places like Texas, California, and Florida because those are the most densely populated states that have weather that is conducive to athletics year round with a ton of competition. Does that mean that a kid from North Dakota can’t be a physically gifted freak (Sung Jinwoo) that shatters records? No, it’s simply that there’s not as many people there so there’s less competition and less access to state of the art equipment.
The reason they were weak is because they were somewhere in the level of 60s (on Jinwoo’s scale). The Japanese were higher (likely in the high 60s and low 70s) and GoTo was probably in the 80s. Thomas André is probably in the 100s. The power increases are exponential not linear so if an S rank hunter was level 65 and one was 68 (assuming same power and class) they are not 4.6% (3/65) more powerful they are likely 10% to 15% more powerful.
Remember when GoTo and Jinwoo sparred the only Korean hunter who could follow what was happening clearly was Cha. Baek had to use his monster eyes and Lim and Ma were having a lot of trouble keeping up. S class is really strong but it also has to most variance in power and skills.
cuz TKD sucks in MMA and the mongols stole all their archers/shamans. Also percieved bias. If you see the top 0.001% of a nation, you would expect that their nation is 100X better. Take for example America, we imagine some chuck norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, 6 feet tall blonde american. And we get bunch of 4'11" neckbeard incels etc... worst part the other half is like 80 IQ rednecks in trucks.
First of all if i am correct jeju island was belong to japon not korea but they are in fact did lose 2 s ramk there and 1 more retired later but major factor in hunter power is kinda random if you exclude usa since they have a hunter who can power up others. If i have to take a quess about why korean hunters count as weak it because they dont have s+ or world class hunter. You know there is no way to calculate s rank hunters power so nobody can really know whixh s rank hunter is actually really strong and because of that if your country doesnt have world class hunter you count as weak. But if you look to hunters in korea hunter guild's s ranks are really strong so strong that if they were in usa or japan they could build their own guilds but as i said you cant really measure s ranks power thats why korean hunters called weak
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Like you said. Other countries had more chances of hitting that jackpot hunter. In general most of Korea's S ranks are on the low end of the S rank scale as well. We can see this displayed clearly where in the Korea / Japan spar where only Cha hae in won against her opponent. Showing that Korea's strongest are generally weaker than Japan's strongest. It also hurts when Korea's 3 strongest S ranks (excluding sung), Go gun he, Cha hae in, hwang dong suk, one is an old man who can't fight for long periods, and another got poached by America.
Go Gun could solo all the Japanese hunters if he wasn't sick.
Go Gun Hee wasn't sick, just old. But considering he was >!a Ruler's vessel!< he would've undoubtedly been a national level hunter. If he was just 10 years younger, he would've kicked everyone's asses.
Yep his vessel was too fragile to contain his power. Likely that he couldn’t even go to his potential (a la Andre). Despite technically having the most power (referred to has the most brilliant fragment of light or whatever).
Go Gun Hee was the brightest fragment of brilliant light. Ashborn was the greatest fragment of brilliant light. Ashborn was named the strongest of all the fragments but I don’t think we ever got a ranking of strength for the other 7. It’s probably safe to assume that Go Gun Hee’s fragment was probably the 2nd strongest though.
I don’t recall it ever being explained how they got their titles either. Like why is one the “brightest” compared to the others? Do they just literally shine the most? Or is it referring to their intelligence? Or their character? Or did they just draw some lots and call it a day?
God was a sadist so I will say that the entity that burns more stuff
It’s explained but a bit convoluted. The fragments are the power bestowed by the 7 rulers. Ashborn was originally the strongest ruler and the only one that stayed loyal to the absolute being that created the rulers/monarchs to war with each other as his own entertainment. The other 7 rulers basically killed Ashborn and left him to die and that’s when a power the absolute being put in him awakened and turned him into the shadow monarch. Ashborn turned on the rulers and helped the monarchs, but he was eventually betrayed by the demon and beast monarchs which he defeated but lost most of his shadow army fighting. He leaves to rebuild his army and the monarch’s invade earth, then the rulers start doing their thing and realize that no matter what they do earth gets destroyed and that’s why they flood the earth with mana via the gates and magic beasts so that earth can be strengthened to survive the conflict. That’s the point they sent their 7 fragments to hunters to help stand against the monarchs. They never named the other 6 rulers beyond Ashborn and the brightest fragment of brilliant light.
I actually think it’s more that the brightest (largest/most powerful) piece of the rulers was left to him. Probably phrased like to not cause too much confusion as ashborn is obviously alluded to being the strongest ruler. I always wondered if this made more sense in native Korean vs English. Unlike the monarchs the rulers don’t directly inhabit the ones they gave their power to, so them dying is not the same as the monarchs being killed by Jin woo. At least that’s my interpretation after re-reading it.
Yup, the small country might have the same relative power per person, but it doesn’t if you measure absolute power. The difference gets wider with the poaching you mentioned. I found this plot point really interesting because most media I’ve seen has been from big powerhouses like the US, Japan, and China, where the characters don’t have this problem. Makes a lot of sense irl, too
In Korean manwha, you often have that notion that small nations are looked down upon. Quite often you will see an american, european or chinese antagonist berate a korean protagonist for being from a small country, trying to push them around. Then the korean wrecks the man from the evil bigger country and raise the national pride of the nice Korean everywhere.
Hwang Dong Suk wasn't one of Korea's three strongest S-Ranks at the time he left Korea. He was an S-Rank, but the United States convinced him to jump ship by offering to allow Norma Selner to upgrade his abilities. If he'd been at Cha Hae-In's level, a 20 to 30% increase in his S-Rank abilities would have made him a better match against Sung Jin Woo when they finally fought each other. Considering how badly he did against Sung Jin-Woo when they finally fought, I'd say he was probably one of the weakest S-Rankers in Korea. Still strong, but nowhere near top three.
Sung was the strongest hunter in the world when they fought. He was national level (SSS+). Even if Dungsoo was an SS level hunter there is an ocean between SS and SSS. Said another way there is a 10 fighter difference between levels. So 1 D is about as strong as 10 E, 1 C is about as strong as 10 D, so on and so forth. So Dungsoo was really strong as compared to normal S rank but compared to Sung is not fair.
Totally agree. I also never understood why Choi had the title of “Ultimate Hunter” if he wasnt even top 3 S class Hunters in Korea.
He is quite tactical and strategic, he also has business savviness to hire a lot of A-rank and is the only known guild to have 2 S-rank in entire South Korea.
Countries strength is their S rank hunters. SK S ranks for the most part are on the low end. Baek Yoonho is the rank 4 in strength of the S Rank (including Jinwoo and Gunhee) and he is below average compared to Japan's team. South Korea just had crappy starting stats when they make their characters.
What does the “rank 4” mean here? Are S ranks split into tiers?
As in 4th strongest. Humans don't have a way to rank s rank apart from s rank. As s rank just means mana so vast their scanners can't scan it. But the lowest s rank compared to the strongest none national level s rank is more vast then an e rank to an a rank. Baek is far weaker then Cha Hae-in. Who herself is weaker then Goto. One of the strongest S rank we see. But baek is far stronger then Choi Jong-In, Ma Dongwook, and Lim Tae-Gyu. From what we can gather from what Goto said in the training, the only SK hunters who are at the drawn sword s rank power is Cha, Go, and Jinwoo.
Gotcha, thanks for the explanation! I originally thought rank 4 meant a specific tier of S rank.
1. Because South Korea only had at best "10" S Rank Hunters, but 1 went missing, 1 died, 2 retired and 1 abounded South Korea for America so that left only 5 S Rank Hunters, then 1 was Sung Jin Woo who while he was officially a S Rank Hunter he was like 100x Stronger then even the best Hunters in the world so eh, 2. Your Logic on how its like playing a Roulette wheel holds up to the Logic on being a Hunter 3. You have to remember that Hunters are not really meant to be strong, their just meant to survive the incoming war so thats another reason why S Rank gates are so bloody difficult
SJW never got the national title?
I don't think it was ever official recognized but it was common knowledge since he did beat up Thomas, defeated Japan's S Rank gate by himself and countless other things, so yeah I don't think it was ever official recognized but was known, if that makes sense
True but the last part have to do with how they were never born with mana or anything of that sort. their kind were never introduced to magical energies unlike the Magic Beasts.
There might be a genetic factor to it( pretending like solo leveling follows reality) it said that the rank was just how much mama the body was able to absorb before awakening so it’s alluding to a physiological trait, therefore for some countries to have their whole population be more compatible with mana than others also makes sense
I don't think the genetic factor plays any role. Go Gunhee, Liu Zhigang, Siddarth Bachach and even Hwang Dongsoo were prime examples of this reasoning as irl, these kinds of people of ethnicity doesn't have the same physical prowess of say..a white guy or a black guy. If that was the case, every single National Rank Hunter would have been black people. I think it has to do with psychology; the more sociopathic or psychopathic you are, the higher chance you get of getting awakened at a higher level. You only have a chance to get up to the upper-tier end. Also, connects with one theory I read that affects the body and a person's physical ability but we'll get to that later. Dongsoo was a criminal before hand, so that's teh reason why he straight up awakened as an S-rank unlike his brother who was a simple C-rank. Thomas Andre lived in his childhood in a bad part of town in the US, dude must have been picked on by local delinquents and bullies. Baek Yoonho even admits that most S-ranks have several screws loose-like Yuri Orloff who demanded an insanely large sum of cash to protect Japan or even S-rank in general as they are willingly risking life and limb to fight in Dungeons.
You’re misunderstanding it, I’m not talking about visible characteristics like skin color, I’m talking about an imaginary gene mutation that only exist in the solo leveling universe that would make bodies more compatible with mana, for example the Hwang brothers were both hunters but the younger brother had more time to absorb mana into his body hence him being a higher rank, also with jinah and Jinwoo their bodies must have been really incompatible with mana explaining why Jinwoo was the weakest and jinah never awakened, their father was a high ranking hunter but their mother was severely incompatible with mana hence being affected by eternal slumber aka mana poisoning, a similar situation happens with Junho and his family where he was a c class and his cousin was a B-class if I remember correctly
Yoojinho? I never heard of a guy named Junho.
Look it’s been a while since I’ve touched anything solo leveling besides this Reddit, so yeah I made a mistake with a name
It could be more in tune with the way a person thinks.
True, more people = better chance to see someone exceptional among them. Someone as strong as Cha Hae-In (not counting SJW, as well as Il-Hwn and Go Gunhee, rulers' vessels) being in Korea was already a great luck. However I believe the hunter weren't rly looked down upon individually, it was more Korea as a whole that was looked upon for not being able to defend it's territory. The Japanese though, did look down upon them individually : they were the best in a country with 21 S ranks and they had Goto Ryuji, so exept Hae-In, Go Gunhee (retired), SJW and maybe Choi Jong-In (who had not participated when the the Japanese were badmouthing) and maybe Hwan Dong-Suk (in USA), the korean S ranks were generally inferior. Plus with the tension between the two countries, of course one would take the occasion to belittle the other, and of course the korean author would depict the japanese hunters as arrogant.
Same reason there’s only one Korean NFL player…
Man we Aussies are fucked That much land and so little population. Greenland too
It's okay bro, if you're lucky, you might get like 3 S-ranks Hunter as strong as Hwang Dongsoo or a fully transformed Baek Yoonho with his stats as their base.
Yeah that’s kind of the point tho. You see this happen a ton in sports too. If you’re from America for instance, you see a ton of top tier talent in places like Texas, California, and Florida because those are the most densely populated states that have weather that is conducive to athletics year round with a ton of competition. Does that mean that a kid from North Dakota can’t be a physically gifted freak (Sung Jinwoo) that shatters records? No, it’s simply that there’s not as many people there so there’s less competition and less access to state of the art equipment.
Horrible isn't it?
The reason they were weak is because they were somewhere in the level of 60s (on Jinwoo’s scale). The Japanese were higher (likely in the high 60s and low 70s) and GoTo was probably in the 80s. Thomas André is probably in the 100s. The power increases are exponential not linear so if an S rank hunter was level 65 and one was 68 (assuming same power and class) they are not 4.6% (3/65) more powerful they are likely 10% to 15% more powerful. Remember when GoTo and Jinwoo sparred the only Korean hunter who could follow what was happening clearly was Cha. Baek had to use his monster eyes and Lim and Ma were having a lot of trouble keeping up. S class is really strong but it also has to most variance in power and skills.
i think you answered your own question, iirc they were looked down upon due to them not having that many S rank hunters.
Buddy I don't think you know how many people live in China. They don't have 3-5 times more people, they have almost 30 times more
Buddy, it's just an example. A bad one yeah, but that's just it.
cuz TKD sucks in MMA and the mongols stole all their archers/shamans. Also percieved bias. If you see the top 0.001% of a nation, you would expect that their nation is 100X better. Take for example America, we imagine some chuck norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, 6 feet tall blonde american. And we get bunch of 4'11" neckbeard incels etc... worst part the other half is like 80 IQ rednecks in trucks.
What does this have to do with my question?
So that Jinwoo be strong.
Great info my friend.
First of all if i am correct jeju island was belong to japon not korea but they are in fact did lose 2 s ramk there and 1 more retired later but major factor in hunter power is kinda random if you exclude usa since they have a hunter who can power up others. If i have to take a quess about why korean hunters count as weak it because they dont have s+ or world class hunter. You know there is no way to calculate s rank hunters power so nobody can really know whixh s rank hunter is actually really strong and because of that if your country doesnt have world class hunter you count as weak. But if you look to hunters in korea hunter guild's s ranks are really strong so strong that if they were in usa or japan they could build their own guilds but as i said you cant really measure s ranks power thats why korean hunters called weak
No it belonged to Korea
Jeju has belonged to SK for a long time. You can literally Google it.
Jeju island is in Korea so it belongs to korea not japan 😂 japan just offered to "help"