Lee Sedol
South Korean Go player
Lee Sedol (Korean: 이세돌; born 2 March 1983), or Lee Se-dol, is a South Korean former professional Go player of 9 dan rank. As of February 2016, he ranked second in international titles (18), behind only Lee Chang-ho (21). His nickname is "The Strong Stone" ("Ssen-dol"). In March 2016, he played a series of matches against the program AlphaGo that ended in Lee losing 1–4.
Lee announced his retirement from professional play in November 2019, saying he could never be the top overall player of Go due to the increasing dominance of artificial intelligence (AI), which he called "an entity that cannot be defeated". In a 2024 interview, he said "losing to AI, in a sense, meant my entire world was collapsing. ... I could no longer enjoy the game. So I retired."
Biography
Lee was born in South Korea in 1983. He was born and grew up on Bigeumdo Island.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lee Sedol” is south Korean Go player. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Sedol, South and Korean, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “south Korean Go player” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q486559. VIAF identifies the subject as 317290822. The Library of Congress control number is n2013068298. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983, 2016, 2019 and 2024.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Lee Sedol”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Lee Sedol primary sources, Lee Sedol archive and Sedol research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Lee Sedol”?
- Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
- How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Lee Sedol” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.