South Korea's World Cup Campaign on Brink After Defeat by South Africa

South Korea’s crumbling World Cup campaign has been left dangling by a thread following a 1-0 defeat by South Africa, on a night when coach Hong Myung-bo axed Son Heung-min from his starting line-up.

It had appeared that Hong’s team were limping towards a last-32 meeting with Canada in Los Angeles, home to more than 300,000 Koreans, when they survived multiple South African opportunities to remain deadlocked beyond the hour mark.

But energetic winger Thapelo Maseko, the most dangerous player on the pitch, finished expertly after 63 minutes to secure his country’s progress to a World Cup knockout stage for the first time.

“I’m very proud of the performance of my team and I think we gave an answer to all those big mouths of the last weeks that thought that we had to change something,” Hugo Broos, the South Africa coach, said.

“We just did what we did. We just did what I wanted to do and this is the result.”

Already under the microscope back at home, Hong is staring at the ignominy of twice failing to take South Korea out of their group, having claimed only one point as boss in 2014.