South Korea ended India’s unbeaten Asian Games run in 2018, and India have just beaten them 63-31
India’s men beat South Korea 63-31 at the Tokai Citizen Gymnasium in Aichi on Tuesday for a second straight Group A win. The fixture carried history: South Korea inflicted India’s first ever Asian Games kabaddi defeat eight years ago.
Sep 22, 2026
South Korea handed India their first ever defeat in Asian Games men’s kabaddi. On Tuesday in Aichi, India put 63 points on them.
The 63-31 win at the Tokai Citizen Gymnasium gives the defending champions two wins from two in Group A, after Monday’s 49-24 against hosts Japan.
The half-time score told the story
India led 34-14 at the interval and the match was effectively finished there. Sunil Kumar’s side scored 23 out points and seven bonus points in that first half and forced two all-outs. South Korea’s raiders managed ten touch points between them before the break, which is the number that explains everything else.
Across the full match India’s raiding unit took 38 points to South Korea’s 23, with 17 bonus points in total. The second half was worth another 29 points to India, so there was no let-up after the restart either.
Why this fixture carried some weight
On 20 August 2018, South Korea beat India 24-23 in the group stage. It was India’s first defeat in the competition, 28 years after kabaddi joined the programme, and it broke something. Iran then beat India 27-18 in the semi-final, India took a shared bronze with Pakistan, and Iran walked off with a gold medal India had won at all seven Games since 1990, without losing a single match along the way.
India got it back in Hangzhou, beating Iran 33-29 in a final that was held up for more than an hour by a disputed do-or-die raid. They arrived in Japan as champions with that 2018 week still attached to the fixture list, and South Korea were in their group again.
Thirty-two points is a fairly emphatic way of saying that week is over.
What is left in the group
Group A has India, Bangladesh, South Korea, Chinese Taipei and Japan. India play Bangladesh on Wednesday, with Chinese Taipei to follow before the round robin closes on 24 September. The semi-finals are on 25 September and the gold medal matches on 26 September.
Two matches in, nobody has made India play under pressure. Japan went down by 25, South Korea by 32, and the raiding unit has not had to win a do-or-die raid that actually mattered. That is usually a compliment. It is also how a team arrives at a Friday semi-final without having been tested since the flight over.