South Korea’s Dong Jin Kang tries to score against Indonesia’s Muhammad Khasoni in their Asian Volleyball Championship game on Friday at the Ninoy Aquino Stadium. (Photo by BOB DUNGO JR.)

Hard-hitting Korea continued its dominant form as it thumped perennial Southeast Asian Games champion Indonesia, 25-17, 25-15, 25-15, on Friday to bolster its semifinal bid in the 15th Asian Senior Men’s Volleyball Championship at the Ninoy Aquino Stadium.

The Koreans flexed just enough muscle to outplay the Indons in the modified quarterfinal phase. The top 8 squads in the preliminaries were divided into two groups once again for another round-robin phase where the top two finishers in each group advance to the semis.

Teams which have already met in the prelims and are again bracketed in the same group will no longer compete against each other. Their prelims results will instead be carried over to third round.

With its preliminary win over defending champion Australia, Korea now has a 2-0 record in Group 2. It could earn outright semis berth if Japan beats Australia.

Both teams are playing at press time.

Spiker Kim Yo-han exploded for 21 points highlighted by seven aces for the Koreans, who are out to improve on their third-place finish in the previous meet in Jakarta, Indonesia two years back.

Yung Boon-woo supplied the needed firepower as he posted 11 points and three blocks.

The Koreans were simply dominant they needed just 58 minutes to wrap up the match.

Competing in Group 1 at press time are Kazakhstan and China, and Iran versus Taiwan.

Iran formalized its entry into the quarters via an easy 25-15, 25-17, 25-23 win over Hong Kong at the end of the preliminaries Thursday night.

A big disappointment was the Philippine team which dropped all its three games in the elims, the latest was a 22-25, 25-19, 25-19, 25-18 defeat to Taiwan in Pool A.

The Filipinos are playing against the Thais at press time in the other round-robin classification phase that will determine the ninth to 18th places. The RP team also lost to Kazakhstan and Myanmar.

RP team Sammy Acaylar did not make any excuses for their failure to advance to the quarters. In fact, he lauded the team’s performance.

“Overall, we put up a good fight, pero talagang kinapos tayo,” Acaylar said.