The Korea Open is a professional tennis tournament on the Women’s Tennis Association tour of events. It was initially categorised as a Tier IV category between 2004 to 2008. In 2009, it was rebranded as a WTA International event.
When the tour was again revised in 2020, the Korea Open was categorised as a WTA 125 event. The outdoor hard court event was promoted as a WTA 250 event in till 2023, before finally attaining it’s highest and current status of a WTA 500 event in 2024.
The Korea Open has featured tournaments played in both the singles and doubles formats. The main draw size of singles and doubles is 28 and 16 respectively. Both events are contested in a single elimination draw.
Players win a match by facing each other in a best of three sets format. A set is won when six games are secured with a difference of two. If the set reaches a score of six games all, then a tiebreak decides the outcome of the set. The tiebreak is won by a player who is first to seven points with a difference of two. In doubles, the deciding set is played as a match tiebreak of ten points. The pair who is first to win ten points with a difference of two is crowned the winner.
A champion’s stature at the Korea Open is worth 500 ranking points whereas the runners-up get 325 ranking points. As of 2024, the prize pool of the tournament is USD 922,573. The singles champion is rewarded with USD 142,000 whereas the doubles winners get USD 47,390.
Maria Kirilenko and Beatriz Haddad Maia are the only players to twice make the finals of the Korea Open in singles. Both players have won the title once. However, Haddad Maia won the event as a WTA 500, the event’s most competitive stature in its history. Chuang Chia-jung holds the record for winning three doubles titles at the event.
In 2022, the only edition for men was held which was a part of the professional circuit. Yoshihito Nishikoa won the singles title whereas the doubles title was won by the Afro-American pair of Raven Klassen and Nathaniel Lemmons.
