do you guys know CL or owe him something? because if this is a case of "let's randomly pay a thousand bucks to fly a stranger who's good at mb from asia to usa" why not offer to the best japanese players in the world with the most name recognition? if you explained it to them, i think anyone would "want" to come with 6 months of notice and their ticket paid for them with a good chance at winning hundreds to a thousand in pot money; may as well maximize the hype with the highest level mercenary.
Korean CL has long been considered Korean Champion of Melty Blood, and a member of our International Group. He did a good job of aiding me (as in doing most of the work) communicating to Ecole Manabe the current American thoughts and interest in Melty Blood at Hydra GP (as reported in my
Hydra GP post). Furthermore, A handful of us have talked to CL, I have of course met him personally, so, yes, I think the community does owe him a little bit. Having CL come out to the tournament also gives it a real status of "international", as Korea has long been seen to Japan players domestically as an extra level of competition (though I've been working to change that) - as in, Japanese players do occasionally go to play in Korea for Korea's major each year.
He's definitely not some random Korean player, and was the first one to bring Japan into International consideration for Melty Blood. I also know for a fact a handful of top JP players are wealthy (some definitely not, but some definitely are) could come out to America on their own accord, it's just a matter of making a tournament hype enough to get them to want to come. I didn't start this, but I wholly support it. The top players also highly respect CL, so again, nothing but support by choosing to bring him out, out of anyone.
In regards to bringing a foreign player out over a domestic one, it's to show that the community has real resources and a real movement power to Ecole and their affiliates.