Korea on Thursday failed in its bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Qatar was awarded the right to host the world's biggest football tournament in 2022 in a secret ballot of FIFA's Executive Committee held in Zirich, Switzerland. Russia defeated England in the bid to host the 2018 World Cup.
It will be the first World Cup in the Middle East region. South Korea was in the running along with the United States, Australia and Japan.
South Korea was eliminated in an exhaustive balloting, with the candidate collecting the fewest votes in each round getting eliminated until one country emerged with half of the available votes plus one.
There are 24 members on the Executive Committee, including South Korea's Chung Mong-joon, who is one of eight FIFA vice presidents. But two members -- Reynald Temarii, a FIFA vice president from France, and Amos Adamu, president of the West Africa Football Union -- have been suspended and stripped of their votes following a vote-for-money scandal.
This year, a candidate needed to win at least 12 votes. FIFA said earlier this week that it would not release the number of votes won by each candidate nation.