Korea Republic U17

Son Heung-min wore this shirt in 2009, at a World Cup where South Korea went out in the quarter-finals, one stop on a run that has taken the age group there three times, in 1987, 2009 and 2019. The 1987 side included a young Shin Tae-yong. Byun Sung-hwan took the team to the 2023 FIFA U-17 World Cup, the same year South Korea reached the final of the AFC U-17 Asian Cup and lost it to Japan.

South Korea won the Asian Cup twice, in 1986 and 2002; the 2023 final defeat was the closest the team has come since. In 2025 the side reached the quarter-finals of the Asian Cup again, then went to the World Cup in Qatar, where England eliminated them in the round of 32.

The squad trains at the Paju National Football Center in Gyeonggi Province, the country's first purpose-built football facility, completed in 2001; its main pitch seats 750, a number that belongs to a training base rather than a matchday ground. The players wear red, black and white, matching the senior team, and answer to two nicknames, Taeguk Warriors and Tigers of Asia.

None of that existed on 15 September 1984, when the team played its first international match, away to Bahrain in Doha, and won 1-0.