Was football player Lee Kang-in permanently excluded from the South Korean national football team following an altercation with the team captain and a surprising loss in the 2023 Asian Cup semi-finals? No, that's not true: At the time of writing, the Korea Football Association (KFA) and the acting head coach of the national team had not issued any such announcement and had refrained from commenting on Lee's future.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here), published by @user4826967320435 on TikTok, on February 23, 2024, with a caption translated into English from Korean by Lead Stories staff that reads:
At the end of the day, Lee Kang-in is permanently excluded from national football team.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Mar 1 01:52:21 2024 UTC)
Following a February 13, 2024 report in the British tabloid The Sun (archived here) about an altercation dubbed 'Ping Pong Ding Dong' involving Lee and team captain Son Heung-min, Lee has faced a public backlash in South Korea for what fans believe was his role in damaging team cohesion ahead of a surprising loss to Jordan in the AFC Asian Cup semi-final, on February 6, 2024. According to press accounts (archived here and here) and an anonymous KFA official, Lee became involved in an altercation when Son told him to return to a team dinner which he and several other players had quickly left to play ping pong.
Despite Lee's public apology to fans and Son Heung-min, (archived here and here), who dislocated his finger in the altercation, angry fans continue to criticize Lee, and some fans (archived here and here) have petitioned the Korea Sports and Olympic Committee (archived here) to permanently exclude Lee from the national team roster. As a consequence, a great deal of attention remains on whether Lee will be included in the team's roster for the 2026 FIFA World Cup Qualification rounds, expected to be announced on March 11, 2024 (archived here).
In this context, the claim that Lee has been permanently excluded from the national team has been shared multiple times on TikTok and YouTube, for example here, here, and here (archived here, here, and here).
However, as of March 1, 2024, there had been no official statement or comment from the KFA (archived here) regarding the player. Nor had there been comments about it from national team acting head coach Hwang Sun-hong (archived here). In an interview with South Korea's MBC channel (archived here) posted on February 27, 2024, Hwang spoke in general terms about the team and made no mention of a decision to remove Lee.
Multiple local press accounts (archived here and here) consider the matter unresolved leading to speculation about Lee's future role. A Google News search in Korean and in English, (archived here and here) conducted on March 1, 2024, with the keywords: Lee Kang-in AND national team AND "banned" OR "excluded" did not return any results that could corroborate the claim.
Lead Stories has previously fact-checked another claim on Lee Kang-in allegedly being kicked out of his club, PSG, here.
