Korea World Cup Records: 12 Tournaments in One Offline App
How many World Cup games has South Korea actually won? Ask a room full of Korean fans and you will get answers from five to fifteen. The real figure, across 41 finals matches in 12 tournaments, is eight. Eight wins, ten draws, twenty-three defeats. And the first of those eight did not come until 2002, on the team's sixth appearance, forty-eight years after the debut in Switzerland. I did not know that either until I sat down to build a Korea World Cup records app and had to count.
That is what this is: the complete finals history of the South Korea national team, every tournament, every match, every scorer, in one offline app, plus a daily quiz to see how much of it you really remember.
▶ Get it on Google Play (free): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thefacegood.worldcupkr
How many World Cup games has South Korea actually won?
The answer above is the kind of fact that is surprisingly hard to find in one place. Wikipedia has it, spread over a dozen pages. Sports sites have it, behind a wall of live scores and betting odds. What I wanted was something that opened on the number, with the match history behind it one tap away, and that did not need a connection on the train.
So the home screen leads with the all-time results: 12 appearances, 11 of them consecutive since 1986, which is the longest run in Asia. 41 matches, 41 goals scored, 81 conceded. Best finish, fourth place in 2002. Knockout rounds reached three times, in 2002, 2010 and 2022. It also carries a countdown to the 2030 World Cup, because the next one is always the point.
Korea World Cup records by tournament, 1954 to 2026
Each of the 12 tournaments gets its own page: the group, the opponents, the scores, who scored, who managed the side, and a short story of what that campaign meant. Some of those stories are famous. The 2002 semi-final run on home soil, the first time a team from outside Europe and the Americas had gone that far. The 2010 last sixteen in South Africa, Korea's first knockout appearance away from home. The 2018 win over Germany that sent the defending champions out at the group stage.
Others are quieter and, to me, more interesting: the 1954 side that travelled for days to reach Switzerland and lost 9-0 to Hungary, the five tournaments from 1954 to 1998 without a single win, and the three games Korea played in 2026, which close the record for now.
The all-time numbers, the legends, and the milestones
Beyond the tournament pages there is a records section with the top scorers, the most-capped players at finals, and twelve legends with their World Cup stories: Cha Bum-kun, Hong Myung-bo, Ahn Jung-hwan, Park Ji-sung, Son Heung-min, Kim Min-jae, Lee Kang-in, and the one foreigner on the list, Guus Hiddink. A separate milestones list captures the firsts: first win, first knockout round, first semi-final, first away-tournament last sixteen.
There is also an "on this day" feed with 36 dated moments, so opening the app in late June tends to surface something from 2002.
A daily quiz that is harder than it looks
One new question a day, drawn from a pool of 50, all built on the Korea World Cup records in the app itself. Who scored the golden goal against Italy? Which year was the first win? Which opponent has Korea faced most often? It tracks your streak and your accuracy and lets you share your result as a challenge card, which is how it gets passed around group chats before a big match.
I made the quiz for the same reason I made the app: I kept arguing about these facts with friends and kept being wrong.
Why the numbers took longer than the app
The screens were the easy part. Getting the match history right took far longer, because sources disagree on small things: whether a goal was an own goal, which minute a substitute came on, how a 1954 squad list was spelled. Every tournament's win-draw-loss and goals-for and against were summed and checked against the all-time totals until they matched exactly, and the 2026 figures were updated once the tournament ended. If you spot an error, tell me, and I will check it against the records again.
Everything runs offline, there is no account, and nothing is collected.
Who this is for
- Korean football fans who want the all-time results without the live-score noise
- Overseas Koreans who grew up on 2002 and want the whole story in English
- Anyone who follows Son Heung-min and wonders what the national team did before him
- Quiz people who want one hard sports question a day
- Teachers and parents looking for a clean reference for a football-mad kid
Download (Google Play, free): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thefacegood.worldcupkr
※ This app is a fan-made reference with no official standing; neither FIFA nor the Korea Football Association is connected to it. Every record was gathered from publicly available sources and is offered for interest and entertainment only.
If a number looks off or a legend you think belongs is missing, leave a review. The records list will keep being corrected as long as people keep arguing about it, which in Korea is forever.
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