South Korea Falls to Hong Kong in Asian Games Rugby Semifinal

South Korea's men's rugby sevens team missed a second consecutive Asian Games final after losing 35-14 to defending champion Hong Kong in the semifinals in Nagoya on Saturday.

The Korean side entered the match seeking to build on the silver medal it won at the previous Asian Games. Instead, it ran into the region's dominant team one round earlier and fell behind 14-0 by halftime at Minato Soccer Stadium.

South Korea mounted a stronger challenge after the break. Jang Jeong-min and Lee Moon-gyu each scored a try as the team produced 14 second-half points. Hong Kong, however, maintained control with five tries across the match and prevented the comeback from developing into a close finish.

The result repeated the central challenge that has confronted Korean rugby for much of the past two decades. Hong Kong won the men's sevens title at both the 2018 Jakarta-Palembang Games and the 2022 Hangzhou Games, and it defeated South Korea in the final of the latter tournament. Japan has also remained one of the strongest teams in Asian rugby.

South Korea once led the regional competition, winning Asian Games gold in Bangkok in 1998 and again in Busan in 2002. It then endured a long run outside the final as Hong Kong and Japan moved ahead. The breakthrough came at the previous Games, when South Korea reached the gold-medal match for the first time in 17 years and finished with silver.

Saturday's semifinal loss leaves South Korea with another demanding assignment. The team is scheduled to face Japan in the bronze-medal match at 6:10 p.m. local time. Japan was pushed into the third-place playoff after a 10-7 semifinal defeat to China.

The meeting will also give South Korea an immediate opportunity to reverse an earlier result from this tournament. Japan beat the Korean team 24-14 during the group stage. South Korea must now overcome that defeat, recover quickly from the semifinal and beat one of Asia's traditional rugby powers to leave the Aichi-Nagoya Games with a medal.

For Hong Kong, the victory keeps alive its bid for a third straight Asian Games men's rugby sevens title. For South Korea, the focus shifts from reaching the final to preserving a place on the podium in a rematch against a familiar regional rival.