Host South Korea finished second on the medal table at an indoor multi-sport competition for Asian athletes that ended over the weekend.

The Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games wrapped up on Saturday in Incheon, about 40 kilometers west of Seoul, after eight days of action.

South Korea claimed 21 gold medals, finishing behind China, which earned 29 gold medals.

China has now topped the medal standings in each of the first four Asian Indoor Games. South Korea did have more medals overall than China, 67 to 52.

Vietnam finished a distant third with eight gold medals and 27 medals in total.

South Korea fell shy of its initial goal of 23 gold medals but achieved a top-three finish as it had set out to do.

The next Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games will be held in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan in 2017.

Nine venues in and around Incheon staged a dozen sports, such as bowling, chess, e-sports, kabaddi, kickboxing, kurash and muay, for some 2,400 athletes and officials from 43 countries. South Korea was represented by 121 athletes and 51 officials in all 12 events.

The Incheon event marked 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 then decided to combine the two different Asian Games in Incheon for this year.

At the last Asian Indoor Games in Vietnam, South Korea ranked sixth with 16 gold medals.

This year, South Korea won medals in 10 different sports and in particular dominated the shortcourse swimming competition.

Of South Korea’s 67 medals, 23 medals, including eight gold, came from short-course swimming. Park Jin-young alone claimed five medals in the women’s races. (Yonhap News)