*This content was translated by AI.
The Korea Table Tennis Association will dualize the national team again this year.
The Korea Table Tennis Association said on the 3rd, "The national team selection contest to select players to represent Korean table tennis in 2026 has begun at Jecheon Gymnasium in Chungcheongbuk-do."
It is a total of three long journeys from the first (January 3 to 10), the second (January 29 to February 1), and the final (February 3 to 6). The first round of selection, which has a relatively large number of participants, will be held separately for men and women. Women's players who started the game first on the 3rd will compete until the 5th, and men's players will compete from the 7th to the 10th.
The Korea Table Tennis Association (Chairman Lee Tae-sung, hereinafter referred to as the association) will operate the national team under a dual system this year. Ten men and women will be selected and operated as the "Korea Sports Council-recognized national team." On top of that, the main goal is to select 10 additional men and women to run a national team named the "Korea Table Tennis Association Operation National Team."
The national team operated by the second-tier association is also a team and a category-moving national team in various international competition dispatch competitions and joint training, and has a more flexible and upgraded position than the previous concept of standing forces.
As there are not a few people, the method of selecting representatives is a little complicated. First of all, the men's and women's national teams run by the Korea Sports Association will select the top three players within the top 50 of the top table tennis Federation (ITTF) senior world rankings (as of December 30, 2025), the top two players among the top 100 ranked players in the same rankings, one winner of the third-ranked national table tennis championship, and the remaining players excluding the first, second and third-ranked players through the selection match.
In the case of the association-run national team, more emphasis is placed on fostering the next generation. Based on the performance of the selection match, the next four players will be selected after being selected for the Korean Sports Council's management team, and the remaining six will be targeted at Junior (U19) and Cadet (U15).
Among the U19 players, the top two players in the selection match, the top one in the selection match among the U15 players, the top two in the U19 world rankings, and the top one in the U15 world rankings are eligible for selection. There is a clue that if the players are selected first in the priority order, they will fill the entries according to the next ranking.
Recently, the proportion of world rankings, which is counted based on various international competitions of the WTT, is increasing on the international stage. This is why most of the national team's selection matches in Korea are based on world rankings. Running the second-tier association's management team in a complex way is also aimed at supplementing the blind spots that can be missed based on the world ranking alone.
As of December 30 last year, Ahn Jae-hyun (15th, Korea Exchange), Jang Woo-jin (18th, Se-ah), Oh Jun-sung (22nd, Korea Exchange), Women's Shin Yoo-bin (12th, Korean Air), Joo Chun-hee (16th, Samsung Life Insurance), and Kim Na-young (28th, POSCO International) who met the criteria for the first place selection in the senior world ranking will not participate in the selection match.
In the case of the women's team, juniors Park Ga-hyun (18, Korean Air, 75th) and Yoo Young-rin (17, POSCO International, 78th) have also met the second-ranked criteria and have already been selected for the Korean Sports Council's management team. As a result, this selection match is a stage in which players compete for seats other than those selected first.
In the first round, players who qualified for the 2026 national team candidate team (10 juniors and 6 cadets), elementary, middle, high school, and university national-scale singles (second-tier elementary school, fourth-tier middle school, quarter-tier high school, and fourth-tier college), and free-participating unemployed players will play in six groups.
A total of 18 players from each group will advance to the second round. After 18 players who passed the first round played the second round in two groups with the association's management team last year, the top four players from each group will advance to the final round, and players from the Korean Sports Association's management team will compete with them for the remaining entry in the full-league game last year.
Meanwhile, the association will hold the 79th Korean Air National Men's and Women's Table Tennis Championships at Jecheon Gymnasium, the same place where the selection contest will be held from the 21st to the 27th.
The men's and women's singles champions of the event, which will be finalized in 2025, will also be automatically selected for the national sports team. Of course, if the first and second automatic starters win, the number of players to be selected in the selection match will increase that much.
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*This content was translated by AI.
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