Korea's performance in the World Baseball Classics since their runner up finish in the 2009 tournament has not been terribly successful. They went 2-1 in Group B of the 2013 tournament which tied them with Taiwan and The Netherlands for the best record in the Group but ended up being the odd team out due to the tie-breaker rules. In 2017 they went a disappointing 1-2 in Group A played in front of their home crowds at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul despite being ranked #3 in the world coming into the tournament. They lost a 2-1 heartbreaker to the surprising Israel team in the opening game of the Group, then were shutout 5-0 by The Netherlands. They blew an 8-3 lead against winless Taiwan in the final game of the Group and had to go into extra innings before rallying to score three runs and salvage one game (and avoid potentially needing to qualify for the next WBC).
Their status as also-rans was reflected in their inclusion in the cards that Topps did for the two tournaments. Topps didn't do much in the way of cards for the 2013 tournament, just
a 15 card insert set in Topps Series 2 that didn't include any players from either Japan or Korea and
a 100 card Topps Tribute set that was a bit more inclusive. However even that only featured three players from the Korean team - Lee Dae-ho, Seo Jae-weong and Yoon Suk-min:
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| 2013 Topps Tribute WBC #49 |
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| 2013 Topps Tribute WBC #7 |
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| 2013 Topps Tribute WBC #76 |
As disappointing as the 2013 selection of Korean players was, it was slightly better than the 2017 selection.
Topps did 115 base cards again for the 2017 edition although the bulk of those (110!) were only available as on-line, on-demand cards. Only two of those cards were for members of the Korean team. Kim Tae-kyun had a Topps Now card celebrating his two run home run against Taiwan and Yang Hyeon-jong had a "Paper Prospects" insert card in that year's Bowman set:
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| 2017 Topps Now WBC #W-12 |
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| 2017 Bowman "Paper Prospects" #BP141 |
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