Overachieving S. Korea ties own gold medal record to finish 8th

South Korea won a medal in the very first medal event of the Paris Olympics on July 27.

The rest of the team picked it up from there and didn’t look back.

South Korea finished the medal race in eighth place with 13 gold medals, nine silver medals and 10 bronze medals, far exceeding its own and many pundits’ projections. South Korea tied its Summer Games record for most gold medals, equaling the mark from 2008 and 2012.

South Korea sent 144 athletes in 21 sports to France, its smallest delegation for a Summer Olympics since 1976. It didn’t qualify teams for men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s volleyball, and men’s and women’s football, among other team sports.

Though the size of the delegation wasn’t likely to impact South Korea’s medal chances — the country wouldn’t have been a medal contender in any of those ball sports — it fed into the general sense of pessimism surrounding the nation.

But that quickly turned into optimism, however cautious, after one day of competition.

Park Ha-jun and Keum Ji-hyeon grabbed silver in the 10-meter air rifle mixed team shooting event for South Korea’s first medal of this Olympics. Hours later, swimmer Kim Woo-min raced to bronze in the men’s 400-meter freestyle final.

Then fencer Oh Sang-uk captured the gold medal in the men’s individual sabre fencing in the night cap.

The race was on.

South Korea had set out to win five gold medals and met that target just three days into the medal competition, before the calendar flipped to August. The country won at least one medal on all but three days of the 16-day medal race.

South Korea completed a clean sweep of five gold medals in archery. Kim Woo-jin and Lim Si-hyeon each won three gold medals. Kim reached five gold medals for his career, making him the most decorated South Korean Olympian, summer or winter.

Shooters brought home three gold and three silver medals. Ban Hyo-jin captured the women’s 10-meter air rifle title at age 16, making her the youngest Summer Olympic champion for South Korea. Another teenager, the 19-year-old Oh Ye-jin, was crowned the women’s 10m air pistol champion over teammate Kim Ye-ji.

After winning his individual title, Oh led South Korea to its third straight gold in the men’s team sabre event.

South Korea picked up two gold medals from taekwondo, both won by first-time Olympians. Park Tae-joon grabbed the men’s -58-kilogram title on the first day of taekwondo competition. Then Kim Yu-jin followed up with the gold in the women’s -57kg event. The world No. 24 knocked down four of the top-five athletes in the world rankings en route to the top of the podium.

An Se-young, world No. 1 in badminton women’s singles, lived up to the hype and captured her first Olympic gold medal.

There were other memorable medals, non-gold division.

Im Ae-ji gave South Korea its first medal in women’s boxing with her bronze in the women’s 54kg event. In badminton, Kim Won-ho and Jeong Na-eun teamed up for the mixed doubles silver medal. Kim became the second member of his family with an Olympic medal, joining his mother, three-time badminton medalist Gil Young-ah.

South Korea collected five medals in judo, with two silver and three bronze medals, three years after grabbing just one silver and two bronze medals. One of the silver medalists was Huh Mimi, a Japanese-born athlete who switched allegiance to South Korea to honor a dying wish of her Korean-born grandmother.

On the last day of the Olympics, Seong Seung-min won bronze in the women’s modern pentathlon. She became the first Asian woman to win a modern pentathlon medal since the women’s competition was added in 2000.

In table tennis, former child prodigy Shin Yu-bin won the mixed doubles bronze and the team bronze, becoming the first South Korean player in 32 years to win multiple medals at a single Olympics.

There were also some disappointments where athletes seen as medal contenders failed to deliver.

In swimming, the 2024 world champion Hwang Sun-woo didn’t even make it past the semifinals of the men’s 200-meter freestyle. High jumper Woo Sang-hyeok finished seventh in the final after failing to clear 2.31m in three attempts. He came in with a season-best mark of 2.33m.

Modern pentathlete Jun Woong-tae was going for his second straight medal after the bronze from 2021 but finished in sixth place after losing steam down the stretch.

The Paris Games weren’t entirely without controversy for South Korea.

Immediately after winning her gold medal, badminton star An Se-young blasted the national team and the Badminton Korea Association (BKA) for, among other things, their mishandling of her injury from last year, and their inefficient and archaic training systems. The BKA denied most of her claims, while An said she would wait until after the Olympics to further state her case.

The back-and-forth between An and the national federation threaten to overshadow the rest of the competition for South Korea.

In the end, though, athletes in action reclaimed the spotlight. And with teenagers and athletes in their early 20s coming up clutch in the biggest competition of their lives, the future of South Korea’s elite sports, once thought to be on life support, suddenly seems very bright after Paris.