South Korea is undoubtedly the best Asian football team. They quaified for their first World Cup in 1954 but lost 9-0 and 7-0 to Hungary and Turkey and were thus knocked out. They have played in every World Cup since 1986 and in 9 World Cups overall, the most for an Asian team.
Their best performance was in the 2002 World Cup which they co-hosted with Japan. Having never won a World Cup game before, they were expected to crash out in the group stages like they previously had, but after beating Poland and Portugal and drawing against the United States they qualified for the knockout stages where they surprisingly beat Italy 2-1 to knock them out of the World Cup.
They faced Spain in the quarter-finals and beat them 5-3 on penalties to advance into the semi-finals. They lost 1-0 to Germany and then lost the third place playoff to Turkey but are the only Asian team to advance so far in the competition.
