Japanese Major League Baseball star Ohtani Shohei and other members of the Los Angeles Dodgers have been welcomed to South Korea with great fanfare.

The team flew in on a chartered plane on Friday for the season-opening series against the San Diego Padres. The series will be held on March 20 and 21.

The lobby at Incheon International Airport was packed with fans and camera crews. Cheers broke out when the newly-wed Ohtani emerged with his wife, who had been introduced earlier on social media.

CNN quoted the Dodgers as saying she is former basketball player Tanaka Mamiko. She retired from the premier women's league in Japan last year.

The season-opener will mark the first official game for Ohtani as a Dodger. It will also be the first official game for Japanese pitcher Yamamoto Yoshinobu, who joined the team this year.

Members of the Padres team, including Japanese pitchers Darvish Yu and Matsui Yuki, arrived in South Korea earlier on Friday.

Both teams are due to play exhibition matches against South Korean teams to prepare for their season openers.

South Korea has never hosted official MLB games before. Partly owing to Ohtani's popularity, tickets for the game on March 20 sold out just eight minutes after they went on sale online in January.

The two-day series will take place at Seoul's Gocheok Sky Dome, which is the only dome stadium in the country.