That can only be a small part of the story. If you look at the current medal count, South Korea has 16 while India has just 2. But none of those 16 Korean medals are from taekwondo. There are 3 judo medals, but that is technically a Japanese sport, not Korean.

Korea was once a part of the Japanese empire and according to older members of the Korean community in São Paulo* the Japanese governor outlawed Korean martial arts and promoted Kendo and Judo at schools. Korean Kendo is known a Kumdo.

Koreans are also crazy about archery, shooting and badminton, sports in which they generally go well.

*I used to live in "Bom Retiro" neighborhood in São Paulo which is a center of the Korean community here, they said me that exactly.

Korea was only a Japanese colony for 35 years (1910-1945). After the Japanese occupation ended, the Koreans did their best to reject everything Japanese, so I don't think you can base your conclusion on that.

I don't deny that the Koreans do well in other sports, just that it's not like they have a cultural advantage or something. For example, their dominance in archery at the 2008 games was partially due to their building an exact replica of the Beijing archery range in Korea 2 years earlier and using it to practice. Many other competitors had never practiced on that archery range until they arrived at the Olympics, and it threw them off.

Don't know, a Korean friend said Kumdo is one of the most popular sports in Korea, he lived there for a couple of years, don't know about judo but I would not be surprised if it was that popular as well.

I'm not Korean and only said what members of the Brazilian-Korean community, in which I have a some friends, said to me.

Just like with Australia and the swimming (the interminable, endless bloody swimming), or China and weightlifting.

Actually, I would argue that Chinese success in weightlifting is one of those caused by heavy government funding. The Chinese model of weightlifting development (starting talent super youge, putting them through special development schools, and picking out the best, and then training them even more / giving them state funding) is exactly the type of money heavy technique that India appears to not have.

Yes, but it's not the only model for success.

The point is that national tallies can be thrown out by the internal medal-granting dynamics of sports.

If weightlifting still gave individual medals for the snatch and the clean & jerk as well as the total, it'd be even more noticeable.