KUALA LUMPUR, June 2: South Korea beat New Zealand 6-4 in an entertaining match at the 14th Sultan Azlan Shah Cup here on Thursday to make sure of a top-four finish while keeping alive an outside chance of reaching the final. The Koreans, third here last year, recovered from a 3-1 deficit midway through the first half to keep up the pressure on leading duo Pakistan and Australia going into Friday’s final round-robin matches.

South Korea have 10 points from five matches, one point behind Australia and three adrift of leaders Pakistan. They meet winless South Africa on Friday while defending champions Australia play India.

Pakistan take on hosts Malaysia needing only a draw with the top two sides in the seven-team standings meeting in Sunday’s final.

South Korean coach Cho Sung-jun said he was always confident of victory.

“Even at 3-1 down, I wasn’t too worried because our strategy was always to focus on the second half, and we did that well,” said Cho, who plans to field a second-string team against South Africa on Friday.

“We have a chance to make it into the final but it’s difficult to see Australia or Pakistan losing.”

Kiwi coach Kevin Town felt his players threw away victory.

“I think we were very tired after half-time,” said Town, whose team still have a good chance of facing South Korea again in the third-fourth place play-off.

“They didn’t win it, we gave it to them. We gave them too many free balls and you can’t afford to do that against a team like Korea.”

New Zealand went 2-0 up in the first five minutes through Philip Burrows and Geredh Brooks before South Korea’s Seo Jong-ho pulled one back in the eighth minute with a field goal.

The Black Sticks restored their two-goal advantage 20 minutes into the match when Bryce Collin hit the Koreans on the counter-attack.

Jang Jong-hyun’s penalty corner four minutes before the interval made it 3-2 to New Zealand but South Korea drew level two minutes after the restart through Kim Byung-hoon and then led for the first time thanks to Kim Kyung-seok’s penalty stroke on 40 minutes.

Brooks levelled for the Kiwis with a 45th-minute penalty corner after South Korea were forced to replaced injured goalkeeper Ko Dong-sik with Shin Yong-ho.

However, with New Zealand down to 10 men after Burrows was sin-binned, Korea took the lead when You Hyo-sik scored with six minutes remaining and Seo put the finishing touches in the final seconds.

Standings after Thursday’s match: