South Korea will host an indoor multi-sport competition for Asian athletes starting this weekend, presenting some of the more unusual and exotic games over eight days.

Incheon, a metropolitan city 40 kilometers west of Seoul, will be the host of the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games from Saturday to July 6. Nine venues in and around Incheon will stage a dozen sports for some 2,400 athletes and officials from 43 countries.

The Incheon event will mark the official merger of two separate competitions. The inaugural Asian Indoor Games took place in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2005, and the last edition was held in 2009 in Hanoi, Vietnam. Bangkok hosted the first and so far the only Asian Martial Arts Games in 2009.

Doha, Qatar, was supposed to have staged the Asian Indoor Games in 2011 but canceled the event. The Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) then decided to combine the two different Asian Games in Incheon for this year.

The sports include bowling, chess, e-sports, kabaddi, kickboxing, kurash and muay.

For Incheon, the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games will serve as a test event for the full-fledged Asian Games set for Sept. 19 to Oct. 4 next year. Incheon will be the third South Korean host of the Asian Games, after Seoul in 1986 and Busan in 2002.

South Korea will send 121 athletes and 51 officials to all 12 events of the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games. At the last Asian Indoor Games in Vietnam, South Korea ranked sixth with 16 gold medals. China, long the most dominant sporting power in Asia, has topped the medal table in the first three Asian Indoor Games, while Thailand led all participants at the last Asian Martial Arts Games.

Among 45 member states of the OCA, only North Korea and East Timor will sit out this year's competition, according to the organizers. (Yonhap News)