Major honours
The origin point of South Korean volleyball is the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where a women's team led by Cho Hye-jung won bronze, the country's first-ever Olympic medal in any ball sport. For a long stretch afterward, the team couldn't get past the semifinal barrier, but the emergence of generation-defining outside hitter Kim Yeon-koung put South Korea back on the international map. At the 2012 London Olympics, South Korea finished fourth, but Kim was both the tournament's leading scorer and its MVP, and the team reached the semifinals again at Tokyo 2020. Women's gold at the 2014 Incheon Asian Games was also a product of this generation. The men's team has had individual success, with Kim Ho-chul playing in Italy's Serie A in the 1980s, but the national team hasn't reached the Olympics since Sydney in 2000. The professional V-League, launched in 2005, ranks among the best in Asia for combined men's and women's popularity, and women's ratings often outdraw the men's league.
Record comparison
Bars are scaled to the strongest team in this list.
Club legends
Rivalry
The rivalry with Japan overwhelms all others, renewed repeatedly at the Asian Championship and in Olympic qualifying; South Korea's 3-0 win over Japan in the quarterfinals of the 2012 London Olympics is still frequently recalled.