Facts about South Korean Olympics shooter Kim Ye-ji
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll have seen images of South Korean Olympics shooter Kim Ye-ji rocking up at the shooting range.
She is one of the two Olympic shooters who have gone viral, with the other being Turkish athlete Yusuf Dikec.
Source: Getty Images via NPR
Even Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk has posted about her, saying: “She should be cast in an action movie. No acting required!”
While she displays absolute calm and exudes badass energy when competing, she seems to be quite different outside the range, as some posts on her Instagram account show.
Source: @k_yeji92 on Instagram
Here are some facts about Kim Ye-ji, the silver medallist in the women’s 10m air pistol event at this year’s Olympics.
1. Full-time shooter Kim Ye-ji picked up the sport in middle school
According to her Olympics profile, Kim was born in Danyang on 4 September 1992, and currently resides in Imsil, where she is a full-time shooter with the Imsil County Office shooting team.
Source: @k_yeji92 on Instagram
She picked up the sport in middle school as she was “curious” about shooting, and later attended Kyungpook National University’s Department of Physical Education. Kim graduated in 2011.
On the Olympics site, Kim stated her ambition to win an Olympics medal, but an interview with News1 revealed her true intention: She wants the gold.
“When asked if she was aiming for gold medals in both events, she answered ‘Yes’ without a moment’s hesitation,” according to the report.
Kim is competing in both the women’s 10m air pistol and 25m pistol events at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
2. Broke the world record for 25m shooting, but this is her first Olympics
One of Kim’s most viral clips is of her composed performance at the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cup held in Baku, Azerbaijan, in May earlier this year.
It just so happened that she smashed the world record for the 25m pistol event, but if she realised she did so, she certainly did not look it.
Yeji Kim sets a new world record in the women’s 25m pistol pic.twitter.com/gN97y4lPgW
— Women Posting W’s (@womenpostingws) July 30, 2024
Stone cold. Can you believe this is her first year competing at the highest level of the Olympics?
Source: @womenpostingws on X
Here’s another angle of her competing in Baku, because we need to absorb that main character energy from every angle possible.
Source: @lucyqrow on X
3. Kim Ye-ji is the proud mother of a 5-year-old daughter
During the Olympics, Kim was seen with an elephant blanket hanging on her person.
Source: Getty Images via NPR
She even competed with it, which only made people like her even more.
After all, it was as though her coolness while shooting was not all there was to her personality — with the cutesy blanket simply adding to her charm.
Source: Getty Images via NPR
According to reports, the elephant blanket is a gift from her five-year-old daughter, who previously didn’t even appear to know that her mum is a top athlete competing in the Olympic Games.
Kim told News1 in May: “My daughter is still young, so she probably only knows ‘Mum went to exercise’,” she said.
She showed her mother’s pride as well, when her eyes sparkled and she responded “Of course” to a reporter’s comment that her daughter would know that her mother is a great athlete after the Olympics.
Since entering the Jincheon National Training Centre, she has only been able to see her daughter’s face through video calls for several months, according to Insight.
After winning the silver medal, Kim proudly said: “My daughter will boast at kindergarten that her mum went to the Olympics. And now she can also brag that her mum won a medal at the Olympics.”
4. Treats gold medallist like a younger sister
Kim’s teammate and ‘roomie’ at the Olympics village in Paris is none other than the gold medallist for the 10m air pistol event, 19-year-old Oh Ye-jin.
Kim said during a press conference: “[Oh] is like my youngest sibling and I always want to care for her, to be there for her.”
“So, when she won the medal I was extra happy,” she added, although she did believe it “would have been better” if she won gold.
But Kim was also at pains not to portray their relationship as that of rivals, noting:
“I do not view her as my rival. This is a big stage, the Olympics, and we won the gold and silver… we were so proud to win [as we’re both] Koreans. I thought it did not matter who won the gold.”
From their pictures together, you can tell they’re not only close, but also that their age difference of 12 years appears irrelevant.
Source: The Korea Times
Kim is even seen comforting Oh after the latter burst into tears of happiness.
Source: The Korea Times
You’ll also notice that like Kim, Oh has her own quirky equipment — in her case, it’s her purple heart pistol.
5. Her glasses, cap, and pose are all fixtures of shooters
Several shooters have gone viral in the past for their cool equipment and pose while shooting, and Kim is certainly no exception.
While competing, Kim usually sports a cap that she sometimes wears backwards, along with a special pair of glasses that include a lens, a mechanical iris, and binders.
Source: YouTube
She also has dark-rimmed eyeglasses that you could swear was out of a 90’s assassin-themed Hong Kong movie.
6. Shoots to ease anxiety
Some athletes practice a strict distinction between their sport and their life outside of it, but Kim doesn’t appear to be one of them.
You’ll be surprised to learn that she maintains her stone-cold demeanour by, well, shooting.
“When I feel anxious, I dedicate myself more to practice to overcome it,” she said to News1.
Source: News1 via Daum
“After that, I think, ‘As expected, Kim Ye-ji shoots well, what was I worried about?'”
Going into Paris, she was completely confident and even claimed to her coach, Jang Gak-seok, that she’d win a gold medal when he made his predictions for the team.
In fact, her personal aim was to obtain three gold medals.
“I feel no pressure at all,” Kim said. “I have reasons to be confident. It’s well-founded confidence.”
7. Didn’t use to think 25m was her main event
Here’s another surprise about Kim: the 25m pistol wasn’t even her speciality event.
She admitted that she has “always been confident” in the 10m event, but her recent performances would suggest that the 25m event is where she is much likelier to win the coveted gold medal.
After winning gold at the ISSF World Cup, she took bronze at the Munich World Cup in June, which was a wake-up call for her.
Source: @k_yeji92 on Instagram
Kim said she was perhaps too lazy going into the event and resolved to perform better.
In the ongoing 2024 Olympic Games, the shooter will next compete in the women’s 25m pistol event at 3pm Singapore time on Friday (2 Aug).
Also read: 5 facts about Yusuf Dikec who is the Turkish ‘John Wick’ of the 2024 Olympics
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Featured image adapted from YouTube and X.
