The San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers will be the first teams to play a Major League Baseball game in South Korea. The series will be the Padres 2024 season opener and will take place on March 20-21, 2024. San Diego Padres infielder Ha-Seong Kim is among the country’s most popular stars.

The games will be counted as spilt home games, one apiece for San Diego and LA.

Venue: Gocheok Sky Dome

Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul is home of the KBO League Kiwoom Heroes and host site of first round games in the 2017 World Baseball Classic.

The domed stadium was built in 2015 and has a capacity of 16,744.

Tickets

When will tickets be available? A limited number of tickets for the Seoul Series between the Dodgers and Padres will be made available for Padres season ticket holders in early February. Members must register by 2/2 and will be notified by 2/9.

Your best bet may be reliable secondary markets like StubHub. There simply isn’t much inventory availble. As a result, the ticket prices so far are, as you might guess, bananas.

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Start Times

There is a +16 hour time difference in Seoul, South Korea.

How to watch on TV Will the series be on television? Yes! Both games wil be broadcast on ESPN at 3AM PST. (Coverage begins at 2:30AM). Spanish language broadcasts se puede ver on ESPN Deportes.

Los Angeles Dodgers

Neglected to mention thus far, the Los Angeles Dodgers will also be there. This two-game series is the season opener for the Padres, Dodgers and all of MLB.

This is the Dodgers first international trip since they played against the Padres in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2018. Prior to that, the Dodger passports were punched in Sydney when they opened the 2014 season against the Diamondbacks.

Shohei Ohtani

Shohei Ohtani recently joined the Los Angeles Dodgers to the tune of $700 million. The Japanese superstar’s hometown of Mizusawa is just across the Sea of Japan.

The Dodgers have had four players from South Korea join their ranks. The first one was Chan Ho Park, who played for them from 1994 to 2001 and then came back in 2008. He made history by being the first Korean-born player to make it to the Major Leagues in 1994. After him, there were Hee-Seop Choi in 2004-05, Jae-Wong Seo in 2006, and Hyun-Jin Ryu from 2013 to 2019. Park in 2001 and Ryu in 2019 even got selected for the All-Star teams. They’re among the four Korean-born players who’ve achieved that honor, along with Byung-Hyun Kim in 2002 and Shin-Soo Choo in 2018.

MLB International Games

Here are a complete MLB series played outside of the United States and Canada.
Mexico

• 1996, August 16-18 – New York Mets vs. San Diego Padres – Estadio de Béisbol Monterrey, Monterrey
• 2018, May 4-6 – Los Angeles Dodgers vs. San Diego Padres – Estadio de Béisbol Monterrey, Monterrey
• 2019, April 13-14 – St. Louis Cardinals vs. Cincinnati Reds – Estadio de Béisbol Monterrey, Monterrey
• 2023, April 29-30 – San Francisco Giants vs. San Diego Padres – Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú, Mexico City
• 2024, April 27-28 -Houston Astros vs. Colorado Rockies – Mexico City

Japan

• 2000, March 29 – Chicago Cubs vs. New York Mets – Tokyo Dome, Tokyo
• 2000, March 30 – New York Mets vs. Chicago Cubs – Tokyo Dome, Tokyo
• 2019, March 20-21 – Seattle Mariners vs. Oakland Athletics – Tokyo Dome, Tokyo

United Kingdom

• 2019, June 29-30 – New York Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox – London Stadium, London
• 2024, June 8-9 – New York Mets vs. Philadelphia Phillies – London

Australia

• 2014, March 22-23 – Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Arizona Diamondbacks – Sydney Cricket Ground, Sydney

Baseball in South Korea

Baseball was first introduced to Korea during the Japanese colonial period in the early 1900s, and after independence in 1945, it quickly became the country’s national sport. The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) was established in 1982, and since then, it has grown into a popular league with ten teams. Major League Baseball has had a long-standing interest in South Korea, and in 2008, it signed a memorandum of understanding with the KBO to promote and develop baseball in the country. In 2014, the KBO and MLB signed a player-transfer agreement that allows Korean players to join MLB teams. In August 2022, MLB and the Players Association announced the creation of the Korea Series, which would have been the first time MLB players traveled to South Korea to play games since 1922. However, due to a contractual issue with a local promoter, MLB canceled the 2022 Korea Series, which was scheduled for November. Despite this setback, both MLB and KBO remain committed to promoting baseball and fostering a closer relationship between the two leagues.

There are 5 Korean-born players currently on MLB rosters in 2023: Kim, Ji-Hwan Bae and Ji-Man Choi (Pittsburgh Pirates), Rob Refsnyder (Boston Red Sox), and Hyun-Jin Ryu (Toronto Blue Jays).

In San Diego at Petco Park, the Padres will be celebrating Korean Heritage on Tuesday, September 19.