Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Lim Yo Hwan, 25, has a 587,000- strong fan club and is sponsored by SK Telecom Co., South Korea's largest cell-phone company. His job is to destroy intergalactic aliens.

Lim is one of 240 registered professional gamers in the country who compete in tournaments of the best-selling computer game StarCraft. Competitions draw almost a third of the nation to watch games on television or play them on the Internet, attracting sponsors including Samsung Electronics Co., Asia's biggest technology company, and Shinhan Bank, a unit of the nation's second-largest lender.

South Korea is the world leader in professional gaming with 600,000 to 700,000 people attending StarCraft tournaments each year. The 40 billion won ($39 million) industry, including revenue from broadcasting and sponsorships fees, is set to triple by 2010, according to Samsung Economic Research Institute.

Shinhan Bank is the latest sponsor of the ``Star League,'' a three-month competition aired weekly on local cable channel Ongamenet. Previous backers have included KT Freetel Co., Tokyo- based Olympus Corp., and Coca-Cola Co., based in Atlanta.

``We are betting that young potential customers will be more aware of the name Shinhan when they open their first bank account or apply for their first loan,'' said Kim Byung Kyu at Seoul-based Shinhan's e-business department.

The tournament, held three times a year, has a sponsorship fee ranging between 400 million won ($400,000) and 500 million won. Sixteen professional gamers compete for a berth in the final for the 20 million won first prize, part of a 60 million won total payout.

Building an Army

About 17 million Koreans are engaged in e-sports, according to Samsung Economic Research Institute in Seoul. Each week, hundreds of teenage and 20-something game lovers pack a special television studio for Ongamenet in southern Seoul to watch and cheer their favorite players battle it out with Irvine, California-based Blizzard Entertainment's StarCraft.

The software, released in 1998, is South Korea's best- selling computer game. The main goal is to control one of three galactic species and build up an army to destroy the opponent. A game usually lasts less than 20 minutes.

Lim, seeded second in the latest tournament, has an Internet fan club at Seoul-based Daum Communications Corp., which operates one of South Korea's most-visited Web sites, with 587,000 members. Kwon Boa, aka BoA, South Korea's most famous female singer, has about 510,000 fans at the same site.

`Tough Job'

``It's a tough job to be a pro gamer, but I feel people are recognizing it as a real profession,'' Lim said. ``Sponsorship by a bank shows that the gaming industry is gaining respect.''

Blizzard Entertainment said it sold more than 3.5 million copies of StarCraft in Korea, about a third of global sales.

The Electronic Sports World Cup, founded in 1999 in France, has attracted about 20,000 to 30,000 live spectators a year in its annual tournament featuring six different computer games, according to its Web Site. In the U.S., the Cyberathlete Professional League held a competition last year, where 208 individual gamers and 170 teams registered for the tournament.

The growth in so-called e-sports and the marketing power of the game has prompted companies such as Samsung Electronics, Asia's largest electronics company by market value, and Seoul- based SK Telecom to establish and manage teams of gamers to compete in the tournaments, much like other professional sports.

There are now 11 teams run either independently or by corporations, according to the Korea e-Sports Association.

Stirs the Crowd

Pantech&Curitel Communications Inc., a South Korean mobile- phone maker, spent 1 billion won to set up its ``Curriors'' team in August 2004, with key player Lee Yun Yeol, 21, signing a three year 600 million won contract. Korea's professional baseball players earned an average 71 million won last year. Lee has a following of 170,000 in his Internet fan club at Daum.

``Whenever one of our players comes out wearing a new product, it stirs interest among the crowd in the studio and viewers at home,'' said Choi Seong Keun, senior manager at Seoul-based Pantech&Curitel's domestic marketing team. ``We think it has a marketing effect of 5 billion won per year,'' or five times the amount the company spends on sponsorship.

In July 2004, the finals of ``Sky League,'' a StarCraft team competition that featured gamers from SK Telecom and Seoul- based HanbitSoft Inc. was held in the port city of Busan. More than 100,000 game fans filled the outdoor stadium set up on the beach to watch the best-of-seven series on giant screens.

The same day in the city, Korea's professional baseball All-Star game drew a crowd of 15,000.

Samsung Electronics, based in Suwon, South Korea, started the first corporate-endorsed professional game team, `Khan,' in 2000 and uses the StarCraft events to market computer monitors and MP3 music players.

SK Telecom, which spent 2 billion won in April 2004 on its team `T1', said e-sports marketing has generated an estimated 15 billion won in revenue. Seoul-based KT Freetel, South Korea's second-largest mobile-phone operator, said its 4.5 billion won investment has returned about 47 billion won in five years.

To contact the reporter for this story: Kevin Cho in Seoul at kcho2@bloomberg.net