The duo took the lead this morning after a superb fencing effort and followed that up with second place in the swim and sixth in the riding.

This gave them a huge lead heading into the run-shoot finale.

They clocked a combined time of 10min 53sec, which was only 14th fastest out of the 17 teams but was enough for a comfortable overall win on 1,563 points.

Oleg Naumov and Ilia Frolov got the host nation on the board as they secured silver on 1,550 points, while Pierre Dejardin and Alexandre Henrard finished on 1,524 for a French bronze.

Latvia, Belarus and Hungary occupied the next three places.

South Korea are a rising power in the sport who claimed men's team gold at last year's World Championships in Berlin.

They also secured team relay victory in Rome in 2012.

"Today, together, the partnerships were very good," said Jun, the 20-year-old junior member of the pair.

"In the first event, the swimming, the time was very good.

"For the fencing, he [Hwang] is a brother so it was very good to be able to follow him - that was a very good bonus point.

"The riding was a little bit more different but in the Combined, the next group was very far back.

"So it was a little bit easy, running away.

"But this is just the first part of the Games and personally these are a very important Games - it is a very happy, fantastic day."

Today's latest triumph followed Germany's victory in the corresponding women's event yesterday.

Action is due to continue tomorrow with women's individual qualification.