S. Korea faces Belgium in two kinds of World Cups next Wednesday

Whether South Korea`s national soccer team will make it to the second round in the 2014 FIFA World Cup will likely be determined at the group match against Belgium on next Friday. On the same day, South Korea and Belgium have a different kind of World Cup game for a ticket to the second round.

The World Cup of Literature, which began on Thursday last week and is hosted by Three Percent, a literature website, is a tournament-based championship among novels from 32 countries participating in the Brazil World Cup. Run by Open Letter, a nonprofit literature publisher of University of Rochester in the United States, Three Percent is an Internet site that translates into English literary works of non-English-speaking countries.

The Korean novel in the World Cup of Literature (WCL) is "Your Republic Is Calling You" by Kim Young-ha, which will compete against "The Misfortunates" by Belgian writer Dimitri Verhulst. A Korean translation of "The Misfortunates" was published in Korea in 2011.

The match was made because of the WCL`s unique match-up method. The WCL holds tournaments among all the 32 teams without holding group-stage leagues. Among four novels from the countries in the same group of the Brazil World Cup, the one from a country with the highest FIFA ranking is matched with one from a lowest-ranking country, while novels from the other two countries are matched.

In Group H, Belgium (11th in FIFA ranking) is matched up with South Korea (57th), and Russia (19th) with Algeria (22nd). From the Round 16, the same matching rule as the real World Cup is applied. The first and second rankers of each group are determined the relevant countries` FIFA ranking.

To determine a winner, the website`s operators serve as judges, reading the two matched countries` novels and post scores on the site. Then, Internet users will vote in favor of or against the score. As of Wednesday, scores of five matches have been announced.

Brazil`s "Budapest" (Chico Buarque) is ahead of Cameroon`s "Dark Heart of the Night" (Leonora Miano) by a score of 4-0, while Japan`s "IQ84" (Haruki Murakami) is leading Columbia`s "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" by 1-0. The online votes, which are tallied on a real-time basis, were overwhelmingly in favor of the judges` decisions.

Three Percent, which holds the WCL for the first time this year, announced that it will hold a WCL with works by female authors next year by launching the FIFA Women`s World Cup.