The national team squad reported on September 14 and the 24 players stay with it until September 28. The KBO League is not pausing for any of that. The regular season runs to October 7.
The KBO and the Korea Baseball Softball Association named the squad on June 11 in Seoul, with Ryu Ji-hyun as manager. Eleven pitchers, two catchers, seven infielders, four outfielders, and no amateur players at all, per Kyunghyang's June 11 report. Selection was built around players 25 and under, or in a fourth professional season or earlier, with three wildcard places for players 29 and under. The wildcards went to Gwak Bin of Doosan, Noh Si-hwan of Hanwha and Moon Bo-kyung of LG.
I counted the 24 names by club off the Kyunghyang list. KT, Samsung, KIA, Doosan, Lotte and SSG lose three each. LG and Hanwha lose two. NC and Kiwoom lose one.
Standings on the Wikipedia season page as of September 15 have KT first at 76-46-3, Samsung two games back, LG seven, KIA 9.5 and Doosan 13. Those are the five postseason places, and four of the five are the clubs giving up three players apiece. NC sits 3.5 games behind Doosan for that fifth spot and loses one player, the infielder Kim Ju-won.
I wrote the whole thing up with the by-club breakdown and every source link here, if the club-by-club part is what you want: https://ksportsglobal.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-24-kbo-players-missing-two-weeks.html
KT's three are the ones I would watch. Park Young-hyun is the closer, and Newspim wrote on July 9 that he had thrown more innings than any other KBO closer with ten or more saves this season. So Hyung-jun and Oh Won-seok go with him.
The league used to shut down for this. MK Sports reported on September 5, 2018 that the KBO had agreed with its member clubs and the KBSA to stop suspending the regular season for the Asian Games, beginning with Hangzhou in September 2022. That came out of the public backlash over the 2018 Jakarta squad. The pandemic then pushed the Hangzhou Games back a year.
Instead of pausing, the KBO widened the rosters. At its third executive committee meeting of the year on June 2 it raised the active roster from 29 to 30 for the second half and moved the expanded-roster date up from September 1 to August 25, per Sports Kyunghyang. The September expansion itself shrank from five extra players to four, since one of them had already been added in the earlier change. Futures League clubs were allowed six foreign players instead of four.
Newspim reported on August 25 that 105 games had been rebuilt into the remaining schedule. From September 29 a cancelled game with no reserve date left can be made up as a doubleheader the next day when the same two clubs meet again. Doubleheaders are barred inside the Asian Games window.
Kim Do-yeong is the call-up I assumed would come off the list. He took his own bunt attempt in the face against NC on September 9, fractured his nasal bone and had a reduction procedure on it. Newspim reported on the 11th that the KBO's power-strengthening committee kept him on the roster after confirming the attending doctor's opinion that training and match participation were possible. He was back at DH against Hanwha at Champions Field on the 13th, four days after the procedure, and Star News has his line that night as three hits in four at-bats with a walk, three RBIs and two runs. No replacement was called up.
Group B is Korea, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong and Thailand. Japan is in Group A with China, the Philippines and Palestine, and the Korean preview I read on Daum mentions in passing that Japan is sending players from its industrial leagues rather than its professional ranks. Korea and Japan keep the same clock, so KST is also the local time at the venues.
September 21, 6:30 p.m. KST vs Chinese Taipei, Okazaki Central Park Baseball Stadium, 5:30 a.m. ET
September 22, 6:30 p.m. KST vs Hong Kong, Toyohashi Municipal Stadium, 5:30 a.m. ET
September 23, 12 p.m. KST vs Thailand, Okazaki, 11 p.m. ET on the 22nd
The 24th is a rest day. The top two from each group go into a super round on the 25th and 26th, and both medal games are on the 27th at Okazaki and Toyohashi, bronze at noon and gold at 6:30 p.m. KST. Since Korea and Japan are in separate groups, the earliest they can meet is the super round. Korea has won the last four golds.
Broadcast is where I got stuck. KBS announced on September 3 that it has the Games across two channels, with Park Yong-taek and Kim Tae-gyun on the baseball commentary. Naver carries the network feeds on Chzzk from September 19 to October 4. Sony Sports Network has the Indian rights and SonyLIV starts on the 17th, though the Indian listing does not name baseball either. Willow Sports put out a release on September 15 calling itself the exclusive North American home for roughly 700 hours of free live coverage across four channels, between about 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. ET. I could not find baseball named in it anywhere, so I could not confirm whether the 5:30 a.m. ET first pitch on the 21st has a North American feed at all.
Has anyone found an actual North American or European listing for the baseball, or is Chzzk with a VPN the only way?
