How it unfolded
South Korea's women's team at the 32nd World Championships, held in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia in April 1973, consisted of just three players: Lee Ailesa, Chung Hyun-sook and Park Mi-ra. Korean table tennis trailed both China and Japan even within Asia at the time, and no one had listed the team as a contender. The team event was run as a round-robin among the top squads, and Korea beat one strong team after another before clearing its final hurdle against China to lift the Corbillon Cup. The 18-year-old Lee Ailesa played the team's number-one singles role throughout the tournament, while Chung Hyun-sook, a defensive stylist, absorbed opponents' attacks to pull the rhythm of matches her way. The title was South Korea's first world team championship in any ball sport. The returning delegation held a motorcade from Gimpo Airport into downtown Seoul, and for the next two decades and more, table tennis became Korea's most reliable source of international medals.
Why it still matters
This is the starting point of Korean table tennis, and the first chapter of a lineage that runs through two Olympic golds at the Seoul 1988 Games, Hyun Jung-hwa's 1993 World Championship singles title, and Ryu Seung-min's 2004 Olympic gold. By proving that beating China and Japan, both with overwhelming advantages in population and depth, was possible, Korea became, over the following half-century, the country with the most Olympic golds outside China.