Jean Paul Yaovi Abalo was sent off on 53 minutes for his second yellow card.

"Early on there was little between the teams. The Koreans had three or four chances, we had four or five. When you don't score you lose," he said.

"When you get a red card, then it becomes hard. Overall we played a good match in a 10 v 11 situation."

Togolese defender Assimiou Toure said the red card shown to Abalo knocked the stuffing out of the Hawks' challenge.

"Things were going well until the red card and we lost our skipper," said 18-year-old Toure, who plays his club football at Germany's Bayer Leverkusen.

Abalo was sent off nine minutes after the break after receiving a second yellow card and Lee Chun-Soo sent the resulting free-kick into the top corner of the net.

Togo's preparations for the match were hit by the uncertainty surrounding the future of Pfister, who dramatically walked out on the team camp last Friday.

However, he was back for the game.

"That's a good question," Toure said when asked about the confusion arising from the coaching situation.

"I don't know what's going on." he added.

Mohammed Kader Coubadja, who scored Togo's first ever World Cup goal, said matters are still to be resolved with the country's football federation.

"There are still problems and we were playing for ourselves and for our honour against South Korea," he told BBC Sport.

"I hope that things can be resolved before the next game against Switzerland," he added.

Striker Cherif Maman Toure backed up his team-mate's comments. "We don't have a problem with the coach leaving and coming back our only problem is with the football association," he said.

"The federation isn't very well organised, all you have to do is look at our preparations, playing lower league clubs sides just isn't good enough.