So you think they can break-dance?

It's a cool evening in front of the Ibis Hotel, an imposing postmodern gray slab that commands the Suwon skyline. Dozens of b-boys from around the world gather in groups in the lobby, bolts of color and noise against the hotel's minimalist white marble.

The Dutch crew, Funky Dope Manouvres, looks as ethnically diverse as Supercrew, the American one (which will fly directly from R16 to tape "America's Top Dance Crew"). Drawing dancers not just from Holland but Scandinavia too, FDM includes second-generation kids whose parents come from Brazil, Indonesia, Poland, Ghana and Suriname. Iranian-Swede Mahan "King Foolish" Noubarzadeh, 21, talks about how b-boying has brought together Muslims and Christians. Then he scans the lobby and sizes up the competition: "The favorites here? Gamblers and Rivers."

The next day is the marquee event, head-to-head elimination battles that are the heart of b-boying. Two crews challenge each other with aggressive, stylized choreographed steps and freestyle solo and ensemble moves. Egos are on the line. Tempers sometimes flare. "America's Best Dance Crew" doesn't dare approach this kind of a format. But the heat of the battle often makes the dancing spectacular.

Outside the hotel entrance, a Belgian dancer is challenging Kim "Bang Rock" Hyun-jin, 24, a genial round-faced dancer from Rivers, the defending R16 champs. They don't speak each other's language, but the Belgian is calling out the Korean by pointing to the ground and staring out from a chin-up tilt. Kim won't step in the cipher, the space between the dancers surrounded by a circle of onlookers that forms the battleground. So the Belgian starts with a six-step, then drops to a flurry of footwork and ends with a shoulder roll.

Now Kim has to respond. He humiliates the Belgian by imitating the European's movements, and climaxes with a series of virtuoso body spins. When he comes to a stop, he is leaning upside down at an inverted angle, balanced on a shoulder and a hand. He grins up at his opponent. This encounter is over. The Belgian offers a congratulatory hand.

Later, sucking on an ice cream treat, Kim laughs. "I didn't want to battle. I keep asking, 'Why?'" Of course, he knows the answer. It's the reason Korean crews regularly practice five hours a day, seven days a week. "We know there's always somebody trying to catch up with us," says 27-year-old Gamblers crew spokesman Chung "B-Boy Sick" Hyung-sik through a translator. "We always have to be ahead."

R16 co-organizer Johnjay Chon says that a decade ago, there were just five crews in the whole country. This spring, more than 50 entered the country's qualifying competition for R16. At events or clubs in Seoul, Chon regularly spots unknown b-boys taking out experienced pros. "What happens is they practice on the lowdown until they're up at a level where they can actually come out and shock somebody," he says. "They practice in the shadow."

Cho "C4" Chung-woon of Rivers says through a translator, "We've been praised for our technical skills, but that's because we would practice head spinning all day long. That's what sets us apart."

Still, the old "Asian work ethic" explanation is just part of the story. When Koreans first emerged, Americans praised them for their power moves -- the highflying crowd-pleasing spins, freezes and gymnastics moves -- but criticized the Seoul b-boys for lacking soul. They were thought to be mechanical, unable to rock with the beat, and lacking in "foundation skills," such as the top-rock and footwork moves that form the historical roots of the dance.

"What the Americans said really influenced them," says Charlie Shin, Chon's business partner and a Korean b-boy advocate. "They went back in the lab. It changed them."

They mastered routines, the choreographed ensemble moves that are essential parts of a showdown. They immersed themselves in the music and the rhythms. They studied the history of b-boying and hip-hop culture. Three members of the Rivers crew -- Born, C4 and Red Foot -- are now affiliates of Mighty Zulu Kings, a crew whose lineage can be traced back to hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa's Bronx River Project dances in the early 1970s. Even their crew name, Rivers, was chosen to capture an aspect of the hip-hop aesthetic.

"You know how rivers flow? Rivers flow swiftly, and that's also how we move and how we think," C4 says. "B-boys in other countries do it as a hobby, but to the Korean b-boys, our life is b-boying."

R-16 organizers Shin, 31, and Chon, 32, are what Asian-Americans call one-point-fivers -- young people born in Asia but raised bilingual and bicultural in America. Shin's 15th birthday came days after riots erupted in Los Angeles on April 29, 1992, after the Rodney King verdict, a traumatic period that Korean-Americans now simply call Sa-I-Gu or "4-2-9" the way one might refer to "9/11." Parts of Koreatown were still in flames and hundreds of Korean-American businesses had been reduced to ashes. The era had poisoned mainstream perceptions of Asian immigrants. White pundits used them to score rhetorical points against welfare and affirmative action, while black leaders boycotted their shops. But neither Shin or Chon was close enough to the fires to have been burned by them. You could call them members of the post-Sa-I-Gu generation.

Hip-hop formed a crucial part of their identity, and a source of redemption. "For me, growing up in the States, I had been called all kinds of names," Shin says. When he moved to Seoul eight years ago, supporting Korean b-boys became a cause. Seeing them win respect from others, he says, "kind of dissolved all that racial bullshit I grew up with." The Korean-Americans became exemplars of hip-hop culture at a moment when young South Koreans were trying to define a new national identity.

Chon was born in Japan and raised in Seattle. After forming and competing nationally with the multiracial Circle of Fire crew, he came to Seoul on a summer trip in 1997 to visit family. Armed with videos and DVDs of dozens of contests, Chon began scouring the clubs for b-boys to battle. He met the Expression crew -- now a hip-hop dance theater troupe -- and gave it a video of a legendary Los Angeles b-boy competition called Radiotron.

"A year later I came back and I just saw there were more b-boys. They were telling me, 'Oh you gotta see this footage,'" Chon says. "I'm watching it and it's the Radiotron [video] that I brought out a year ago. It's been dubbed so many times the screen is shaking."

During the year Chon was gone, teenagers such as the Gamblers' B-Boy Sick had caught religion after watching grainy videos like that one. Lively Internet groups brought hip-hop fans together. Japan's obsession with underground American hip-hop was at its peak, and CDs and videos found their way to South Korea through Tokyo. As South Korea's economy spiraled downward in 1997, a vibrant counterculture was emerging in Seoul.

At the Master Plan club in the Chungjeong neighborhood, rap groups like Garion, Artisan Beats & Keeproots and Drunken Tiger JK explored the rhythms of their native tongue and sometimes disclosed personal traumas or attacked social ills. In Taehongno, an area rich in college campuses, nightclubs, galleries and theaters, b-boys suddenly appeared. The Rivers crew and Expression crew, South Korea's first Battle of the Year winners, were among the b-boys who gathered there.

Next page: "They put as much effort into practicing dancing as other kids do into the Korean SATs"