Sunday, July 25, 2021

2021 Korean Olympic Baseball Team


I wanted to follow up yesterday's post for the Samurai Japan Olympic team with a post for the Korean Baseball Team for the Tokyo Games.  South Korea is the defending Gold Medal baseball champion, having beaten Cuba in 2008.  They also participated in four other Olympic baseball tournaments, losing in the Bronze Medal game in both the 1984 and 1988 games, finishing last among all eight teams in 1996 and defeating Japan in the Bronze Medal game in 2000.

While Japan only has one former Olympian on their roster, Korea has three - Oh Seung-hwan, Kang Min-ho and Kim Hyun-soo - who were all on the 2008 team*.  The team's manager, Kim Kyung-moon, was also the manager of the 2008 squad.  At the other end of the experience spectrum, the Korean team also includes two rookie players (as does the Japanese team) - Lee Eui-lee and Kim Jin-uk.  Since I don't have any 2021 KBO cards yet, these two are missing from the below list of players.

* I partially attribute this to the fact that the Korean experience in the 2008 games was much more positive than the Japanese experience was

As I did for the Japanese team, I'm listing the roster by uniform number with the pitchers first, followed by the catchers, the infielders and the outfielders.  I used this roster on Korean Wikipedia for the names and the uniform numbers (although I'm not sure it is up to date - it only has 23 players listed.  Go Woo-suk is listed the roster on the Japanese Wikipedia page (which doesn't have the uniform numbers) so I'm adding him to the list but without his uniform number):

1 Ko Young-pyo
2017 SCC #SCC-01-KT06/N

11 Cho Sang-woo

2019 SCC KBO Collection #SCCR1-19/062

18 Won Tae-in

2019 SCC KBO Collection 2 #SCCR2-19/106 Signature

21 Oh Seung-hwan

2009 Konami WBC Heroes #W09R118

23 Cha Woo-Chan

2019 SCC KBO Collection 2 #SCCR2-19/145

32 Park Se-woong

2018 SCC KBO Collection 2 Red #SCCR-02R/006

55 Kim Min-woo

2020 SCC Premium #SCCP1-20/E07

61 Choi Won-joon

2020 SCC Premium #SCCP1-20/D09

? Go Woo-suk

2019 SCC Premium #SCCP1-19/158

25 Yang Eui-ji

2019 SCC KBO Collection2 #SCCR2-19/192 All Star

47 Kang Min-ho

2009 Konami WBC Heroes #W09R128

2 Oh Ji-hwan

2015 Superstar Baseball Season One #SBC1501-121-N

3 Kim Hye-seong

2019 SCC Premium #SCCP1-19/079

10 Hwang Jae-gyun

2010 KBO Game Set #AN-007

13 Heo Kyoung-min

2017 SCC #SCC-01-DS15/N

44 Oh Jae-il

2014 Superstar Baseball Season One #SBC01-022

50 Kang Baek-ho

2018 SCC KBO Collection #SCCR-01/239

53 Choi Joo-hwan

2018 SCC KBO Collection 2 Black #SCCR-02B/039

17 Park Hae-min

2014 Superstar Baseball Season Three #SBC03-085

22 Kim Hyun-soo

2009 Konami WBC Heroes All Tournament Team #W09A012

37 Park Kun-woo

2017 SCC #SCC-01-DS01/N

51 Lee Jung-hoo

2019 SCC Premium #SCCP1-19/088



4 comments:

Mischa Gelman said...

The full Korean roster is at https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/2020_Olympics_(Rosters)

NPB Card Guy said...

@Mischa - thanks but it doesn't look like those rosters have been updated since their first announcement because I notice that the Japanese roster on the page still has Sugano on it.

Mischa Gelman said...

I tried to fix the page today after your note; hope I caught all the changes (some of them not yet listed on Olympics.com).

NPB Card Guy said...

@Mischa - getting accurate rosters seems to be a real issue. The Japanese wikipedia ones have seemed to be the most up to date ones but it wouldn't surprise me to discover there are changes that were made that weren't reflected there.

BTW thanks for all you do with the BR Bullpen. That's a great source for information!