The World Baseball Classic is underway and the Korean team has gotten off to a good start:

South Korea didn’t have to work too hard to notch its first win of the 2009 World Baseball Classic.

Taiwan’s starting pitcher took care of a lot of the heavy lifting himself.

South Korea had twice as many runs as hits in the first inning, including Lee Jin Young’s towering grand slam, as it cruised to a 9-0 rout of Taiwan on Friday night in front of 12,704 fans Tokyo Dome.

“The reason for the victory is the Taiwan pitchers gave us a lot of opportunities and our hitters turned those into runs,” South Korea manager Kim In Sik said.

The Koreans also turned a WBC-record five double plays in the victory. The previous high was three by Cuba against the Dominican Republic in the 2006 tournament.  [Japan Times]

In the next game Korea plays Japan, which should be interesting to see if this tournament plays out like the last one did or not.