The source of real competitiveness in Korea

Recent game in WBC 2009, Korea beat Japan by 4 to 1 making its entry into final 4.
How this can be natural (not surprising) news to koreans?
Japan has about 5,000 high school baseball teams, but korea only has 50 high school teams.
With 1% of numbers playing baseball game, how this is possible. They practice the game much
harder than anyone in the world. Maybe in theory 100 times harder...

I was in high school in 1980s. I can only get out of the school after 10 pm. We usally go to school
before 8 am. In the recent book of Outliers, the story of success, Malcolm Gladwell points out
10,000 hours of dedication (investment) to be really efficient at something. In korea, a lot more
people do practice this 10,000 hours from early on whether you study or play music/sports, etc.

So the extent to "work hard" is quite different between Korea and other nations. I don't know where you are, but note that there is a nation that practice this kind of hard to imagine hard work.