Son Heung-min named top S. Korean athlete in nat’l poll for 8th straight year

Tottenham Hotspur’s South Korean captain Son Heung-min has been chosen as the country’s top athlete in a national poll for the eighth consecutive year.

Gallup Korea announced on Monday that Son came out on top in its annual survey of 1,741 South Koreans over the age of 13 from Nov. 22 to 25. With respondents allowed to name up to two athletes, Son earned an overwhelming 70.7 percent support.

Son, 32, scored 17 goals in the 2023-2024 season in the Premier League, his eighth consecutive campaign with double figures in goals. In his most recent match, against Southampton on Sunday, Son scored his fifth goal of the season and collected two assists to reach the top of Tottenham’s all-time Premier League assists rankings.

Son has been captain for the national team for several years and moved into sole possession of second place on the country’s all-time goals list with his 51st goal in November.

Son made his debut in the Gallup Poll in 2013, when he ranked eighth, and has been first in every year since 2017.

Son’s national team sidekick, Lee Kang-in of Paris Saint-Germain, ranked second with 12.7 percent.

The rest of the top 10 mainly featured medalists from the Paris Olympics.

Table tennis star Shin Yu-bin, who won bronze medals in the mixed doubles and the women’s team event, ranked third with 10.4 percent. An Se-young, the women’s singles badminton champion, was next at 8.2 percent. Oh Sang-uk, who swept up the men’s individual and team sabre gold medals in fencing, was fourth with 8 percent.

Bayern Munich defender Kim Min-jae (6.9 percent), Olympic shooting silver medalist Kim Ye-ji (5.3 percent), triple archery gold medalist Kim Woo-jin (5.2 percent), Wolverhampton Wanderers forward Hwang Hee-chan (2.9 percent) and Heungkuk Life Pink Spiders volleyball star Kim Yeon-koung (2.5 percent) rounded out the top 10.

Although baseball is the most popular professional sport in South Korea, no baseball player made the top 10. Gallup Korea noted that voters mostly favored medalists at the Olympics and athletes who excelled in leagues outside the country. No South Korean player in Major League baseball did anything noteworthy in 2024, while stars in the domestic competition, Korea Baseball Organization, didn’t move the needle in the poll.

Two baseball stars each earned 2.4 percent of support to rank just outside the top 10: Lee Jung-hoo of the San Francisco Giants and Ryu Hyun-jin of the Hanwha Eagles.

The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level.