Major honours
South Korea's international swimming story effectively begins with one man. Park Tae-hwan won the men's 400m freestyle at Beijing 2008 for the country's first, and still only, Olympic swimming gold, adding a 200m freestyle silver at the same Games and two more silvers at London 2012 for four Olympic medals overall. Before him, Cho Oh-ryun's back-to-back Asian Games freestyle titles in the 1970s stood as the event's landmark. A long gap followed Park's career, but the 2020s brought a shift built around Hwang Sun-woo and Kim Woo-min. Hwang won the men's 200m freestyle at the 2024 Doha World Championships for the first swimming world title by a South Korean, and Kim took the 400m freestyle at the same meet before adding bronze in the event at Paris 2024. The men's 4x200m freestyle relay has now become an event where Korea contends for a world final.
Record comparison
Bars are scaled to the strongest team in this list.
Club legends
Rivalry
The 400m freestyle rivalry between Park Tae-hwan and China's Sun Yang was Asian swimming's biggest feud in the 2010s, peaking in the London 2012 final, where Sun took gold and Park silver.