South Korea has stepped up one notch from last month's FIFA world rankings to 21st.

According to FIFA's announcement of global rankings for the month of January, South Korea was ranked at number 21 in the world with 689 points, coming in behind Japan and Iran, ranked 19th and 20th, respectively.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, which is in the Group A playoff set along with South Korea for the 2006 World Cup final Asian preliminaries, was ranked 30th, while Uzbekistan and Kuwait were ranked 47th and 55th, respectively.