Korea wins first PUBG Nations Cup on home soil

Team Korea competes at the 2023 PUBG Nations Cup held at Sangam Afreeca Colosseum in western Seoul on Friday. [KRAFTON]

Team Korea won the PUBG Nations Cup for the first time at Sangam Afreeca Colosseum in western Seoul on Sunday, claiming the title on home soil that they narrowly missed four years ago.

The Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) Cup is a 16-team Esports tournament. The game is a player-versus-player shooter game in which up to 100 players fight to remain alive until the end of a battle.

A total of 64 players — four from each country — began the competition Friday and Team Korea displayed a good performance from the first day.

The team — consisting of Cho Gi-yeol, Park Jung-young, Na Hee-joo and Kim Tae-sung — led by coach Shin Myong-gwan earned 49 points to claim the fourth position on the first day, before adding 58 points to snatch the front-runner spot the next day.

It came down to whether they could maintain their momentum on the last day and that seemed likely, with Korea finishing the 14th match in first place. They managed that with all four members still alive through the end, taking down all four Thai members in the process.

Korea continued to dominate and claimed the Nations Cup title with 172 points total in the end. Cho was named the MVP of the tournament after recording 34 kills and 7,208 damage.

Defending champions Team United Kingdom finished as runners-up with 140 points, with Vietnam coming in third with 139 and Argentina in fourth with 133.

With the title, Korea redeemed themselves from the 2019 tournament when they missed victory despite retaining the front-runner position for the first two days. They slipped on the last day and Russia became the inaugural champions.

Sunday’s victory was also the first time that any Korean team has won an international PUBG title since 2019. Gen. G was the last Korean team to win a title at the PUBG Global Championship 2019.

Team Korea claimed $100,000 from a total prize pot of $300,000 this year.

BY PAIK JI-HWAN [paik.jihwan@joongang.co.kr]