Seri Pak’s success in 1998 changed women’s golf in profound ways. Pak was the only South Korean player on the LPGA when she won two majors that season. A decade later, more than 40 South Koreans had LPGA cards, and the phenomenon soon spread throughout Asia.
Pak, however, wasn’t the first South Korean to win on the LPGA. That bit of history belongs to Ok-Hee Ku, who won the 1988 Standard Register Turquoise Classic. Woo-Soon Ko, a South Korean who never became an LPGA member, won the Toray Japan Queens Cup, a co-sanctioned event, in 1994 and 1995.
Pak was the third Korean-born player to win on the LPGA and the first to win a major. It’s only fitting that the sporting icon now has her own namesake event on the LPGA in the Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship, which kicks off this week in California at Palos Verdes Golf Club. (Pak, who went by Se Ri during her LPGA career, is now going by Seri.)
A total of 49 South Korean players have won a combined 220 LPGA titles. Here are the winningest South Korean players in LPGA history: