'Only 3 tickets left for the Olympics' 韓 Baseball, Premier Korea 2 → 亞 Championship → Final Qualifier 'Hard Journey' is foreseen.

*This content was translated by AI.

Korean baseball simultaneously confirmed its possibilities and limitations at the 2026 World Baseball Classic (WBC). It is time to prepare for the upcoming international competitions, leaving behind the achievements of "the first advance to the quarterfinals in 17 years" and the regret of "the loss of the quarterfinals cold game."

The biggest competition is the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, USA. Baseball has been revived as an official event following the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and Korea has won a gold medal in Beijing in 2008, which will inevitably lead to greater public expectations and interest.

However, a difficult journey is foreseen from stepping on to the Olympic stage. Only six countries are participating in the finals of the Los Angeles Olympic Games. The World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) announced the qualifying system for the Los Angeles Olympic Games in February.

According to this, one ticket will be granted to the host country, the United States. The WBC, which ended on the 18th (Korea Standard Time), confirmed two countries in the Americas. Except for the United States, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela (which advanced to the semifinals) with the highest performance among American countries became the main characters.

I have three tickets left. Korea should win one of them.

The first opportunity is the 2027 Premier 12, which will be held in November next year. There are two tickets at stake here. One team with the highest performance among Asian countries and one team with the highest ranking among European and Oceania countries will get tickets to LA.

This means that Korea should defeat Japan and Taiwan in the same Asia. South Korea won the Premier 12 four times in history in 2015 and finished second in 2019, but failed to advance to the Super Round, finishing third in the group stage after Japan and Taiwan in the most recent 2024 tournament.

If you don't qualify for the Premier 12, you have one last chance. The owner of one remaining ticket will be decided in the final qualifying round scheduled for March 2028.

A total of six countries will compete in the final qualifying round. According to the performance of the last continental championships ahead of the Olympics, Asia and Europe will each qualify for the top two teams (excluding countries that have already confirmed their advance to the Olympic finals), and Africa and Oceania will each qualify. You have to win the first place here to catch the last train to LA.

Recently, professional second-tier players or amateur players participated in the Asian Baseball Championship. The championship was last won in 2015, ranking third in 2017, fourth in 2019, and third in 2023 and 2025. As one Asian country is set to secure Olympic tickets in the Premier 12, South Korea is likely to have the final qualifying round in its hands if it ranks in the top three.

In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which won all nine gold medals, South Korea struggled to confirm its advance to the finals only in the final stages. He played an elite member in the 2007 Asian Championship, where the winning team was given one ticket, but finished second behind Japan. After that, eight countries from each continent participated in the final qualifying round, where they competed for three tickets, winning a miraculous gold medal in the final round after Canada.

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*This content was translated by AI.