SEOUL, South Korea — Celebrations erupted Monday for Yang Yong-eun, the little-known golfer who defeated Tiger Woods in the PGA Championship on Sunday, as residents of his home island of Jeju hailed the first South Korean to claim one of golf's major prizes.

People woke up before dawn to watch the final round, including President Lee Myung-bak, who later called Yang to offer his congratulations. Driving ranges were filled before work Monday morning.

Until the 2009 PGA Championship, players from every continent except Asia and Antarctica had captured a major championship.

"We are setting up arches to decorate the island and making banners saying 'Congratulations Yang Yong-eun on winning the PGA Championship,' " said Park Yong-nam, director for operations at Ora Country Club, where Yang played and coached in the 1990s.

Yang, 37, known in the United States as Y.E. Yang, grew up in a poor family on Jeju Island, a resort on the southern tip of South Korea.

Yang discovered golf when a family friend allowed him to work at a driving range. He taught himself how to play after picking up a club at the range.

Golf took off in South Korea in the late 1980s, with the official approval of then-president Roh Tae-woo, who personally granted licenses to golf courses. Business conglomerates built courses where government officials were invited to play with executives and lobbyists.

A game for the elite soon became a quasi-religion for the masses. Despite a chronic shortage of courses in the country and some of the highest golf taxes in the world, the golf-playing population in South Korea is now estimated at about 4 million — one of every 12 people in the country.

Still, there were just 251 courses in South Korea at the end of 2006, compared with 2,500 courses in Japan and 18,000 in the United States. For Koreans to find tee times, they frequently have to leave the country.

About 1.25 million traveled abroad in 2007 to play golf, spending about $800 million, according to the Chosun Ilbo, a South Korean daily.

To reduce golfing trips and limit currency outflows, the government has proposed building more courses and reducing taxes on golf. Total taxes on 18 holes of golf in South Korea come to about $76.

On Jeju Island, Yang's victory will soon allow a slight reduction in green fees.

"We will be launching a Yang Yong-eun promotion discount," said Park, the golf-course manager.

Yang's stunning victory might turn out to be a watershed for the Asian-born men's game, too, much the way Se Ri Pak was for women. Since she won the LPGA Championship and U.S. Women's Open in 1998, seven South Korean women have combined to win 11 majors.

Yang and K.J. Choi are the only PGA Tour players who learned golf in South Korea before coming to America. Choi has seven PGA Tour victories, the most of any Asian, and last year climbed as high as No. 5 in the world.

"It was going to happen one day," said Woods, whose heritage is half-Asian through his Thai-born mother. "If anyone would have thought it would have been a Korean player, people probably would have suspected it be K.J., because obviously he's played well for such a long period of time. Y.E. has won now a couple of big events. He's getting better."

Yang said, "I hope this win would be, if not as significant, something quite parallel to an impact both to golf in Korea as well as golf in Asia so that all the young golfers, Korean and Asian, would build their dreams and expand their horizons."

Yang's victory at the PGA Championship comes nearly one year after 18-year-old Danny Lee, who was born in South Korea and raised in New Zealand, won the U.S. Amateur to replace Woods in the record book as the youngest champion.

Asian-born players had come close in the majors before. There was Liang-Huan Lu of Taiwan finishing one shot behind Lee Trevino at Royal Birkdale in the 1971 British Open, and Isao Aoki of Japan pushing Jack Nicklaus at Baltusrol in the 1980 U.S. Open until he had to settle for second place and T.C. Chen's famous two-chip gaffe cost him a chance at the 1985 U.S. Open, where he was runner-up to Andy North.

"We've been waiting for quite a number of years for this," said Peter Dawson, chief executive of the hallowed Royal & Ancient Golf Club in Scotland. "Perhaps the PGA Championship was not the one we were expecting. But it's great for golf."

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American teenager Michelle Wie had double reason to savor South Korean Yang Yong-eun's stunning three-stroke victory over Tiger Woods at the U.S. PGA Championship. Hawaiian-born Wie also has Korean ancestry and she knows Yang well, having played with him in practice and benefited from his putting advice. "I was really pulling for him," Wie, 19, told reporters on Tuesday. "It was very unfortunate for Tiger but I thought it (Yang's win) was good. I played a practice round with him back in Japan and I just thought he was the nicest guy and a really great player. "We always were kind of close. I thought his win on Sunday was really great just because I know him personally and he has given me a couple of putting tips here and there.