South Korea at the 2012 Summer Olympics and the team were granted exemption to two years of mandatory military service but still required to do four weeks of basic training. Park Jong-Woo was not present at the medal ceremony after the gold medal match between Mexico and Brazil and did not receive the bronze medal with the rest of his team due to his political position on the Liancourt Rocks, which are disputed both by South Korea and Japan by having a claim on the islands, after FIFA was notified about Park holding a sign of South Korea having claim on Dokdo, the Korean name for the
Japan–South Korea relations the Liancourt Rocks controversy flared up again, the event turned out to be very successful. According to David Kang and Jiun Bang, South Korea has tried to create a peaceful middle ground with other North Asian countries such as Japan, for business and trade because of it objective to be the "center of Asian business". The two argue that this agreement favors China more than Japan due to South Korea's unsafe political security history with Japan, which has affected the Seoul-Tokyo economic relations. This has led to a decrease in trade and export between both countries; Japanese tourism is one