Korea take silver in PUBG-based Peacekeeper Elite at Asian Games

Korea claimed a silver medal in Peacekeeper Elite on Sunday, falling behind China to finish the final in second place at the Hangzhou Asian Games.

Team Korea competes in the Peacekeeper Elite final at the Hangzhou Asian Games held at China Hangzhou Esports Centre FOP Area in Hangzhou, China on Sunday. [NEWS1]

Korea claimed a silver medal in Peacekeeper Elite on Sunday, falling behind China to finish the final in second place at the Hangzhou Asian Games.

Peacekeeper Elite is a modified version of the mobile game Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, better known as PUBG — a player-versus-player shooter game in which multiple players fight to remain until the end of a battle.

The Asian Games excluded the player-versus-player battle feature and featured the game’s racing mode, where a team that finishes the race first wins the game. But the players could still shoot targets at checkpoints for additional points.

The exclusion of the player-versus-player battle feature was due to the International Olympic Committee’s judgement that the game was excessively violent.

Four countries — Korea, China, Chinses Taipei and Indonesia — raced four times during the final at China Hangzhou Esports Centre FOP Area in Hangzhou, China.

Team Korea — consisting of Park Sang-cheol, Kwon Soon-bin, Kim Dong-hyeon, Kim Sung-hyun and Choi Young-jae — finished the four races in 50 minutes and 25.039 seconds to take silver, while China came in 44 minutes and 36.943 seconds to top the podium.

Chinese Taipei took bronze with a time of 51 minutes and 4.145 seconds.

Korea’s silver was the country’s fourth medal in Esports, after EA Sports FC Online gamer Kwak Jun-hyuk took bronze on Wednesday, Kim Gwan-woo won gold in Street Fighter V: Champion Edition on Thursday and the League of Legends (LoL) team claimed gold on Friday.

Sunday’s Esports schedule wrapped up Korea’s Esports events at this year’s Asiad, where Esports was included as a medal event for the first time.

Korea competed in four Esports events this year — LoL, EA Sports FC Online, Street Fighter V: Champion Edition and Peacekeeper Elite — and took one medal from every game.

BY PAIK JI-HWAN [paik.jihwan@joongang.co.kr]