When the game was over, with the crowd waving South Korean flags, the winners took a victory lap around the stadium.

“I was aware of the fact that there were a lot of Koreans living in this area,” Jong Beom Lee said. “I didn’t know there were that many. I was very touched by their cheering.

“I’m very happy that we beat Japan and we will work much harder to be in the finals.”

The semifinals will be played Saturday and the finals Monday at Petco Park in San Diego. The Dominican Republic and Cuba are the semifinalists from Group Two.

Park went five innings, allowing four hits while walking none and striking out three. The San Diego Padres’ right-hander threw 66 pitches, 50 of them strikes.

Japan’s Shunsuke Watanabe was even better, going six innings and giving up only one hit with two walks and three strikeouts. Watanabe, a 29-year-old right-hander with a submarine delivery, threw 74 pitches, 46 of them strikes, and retired the last 13 batters he faced.

South Korea put two runners aboard with two outs in the second, but Watanabe struck out Min Jae Kim to end the inning. South Korea wouldn’t get another baserunner until the seventh.

South Korean right fielder Jin Young Lee made a perfect throw to nail Akinori Iwamura trying to score from second on Tomoya Satozaki’s two-out single in the bottom of the inning.

Iwamura left the game at that stage because of pain in his right hamstring, a spokeswoman for the Japanese team said, adding the injury wasn’t serious. Iwamura was replaced by Imae.

“We gave everything we had,” Japanese manager Sadaharu Oh said. “All the games were hard-fought games. It was also showing that our lineup had trouble scoring runs against real tough pitching.”

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