Kim Yeji: The coolest athlete of the Paris Olympics and a South Korean superstar
It is certainly a striking appearance.
The internet’s new favorite Olympic competitor, South Korean pistol shooter Kim Yeji, looks like a cross between a skilled diamond dealer and a sniper for a quirky science fiction army. He’s one of the brightest stars of the Paris Olympics so far.
That’s the beauty of the Olympics. Before the games, you look forward to everything you already knew: maybe Sha’Carri Richardson in track, Andy Murray’s retirement in tennis, or Simone Biles in gymnastics.
But then there are those things you didn’t know you cared about until you see them. And an incredibly cool looking pistol shooter definitely falls into that category.
Kim rose to fame online after competing in her first of two events in Paris on Sunday: the 10m air pistol.
The X account ‘Women Posting Ws’, which appears to be the source of her viral status, wrote under a photo of Kim shooting at the target, with her back slightly arched, her shoulder raised with her chin resting on it, and her non-shooting hand in her pocket, that it was “the most aura I’ve ever seen in an image.”
(Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)
The consensus on social media seemed to be that Kim looked like some kind of robo-assassin from an action movie, a near-future killer who doesn’t need your clothes, boots, and motorcycle because she looks cool enough on her own, thank you very much. GQ magazine wrote that she looked “straight out of a cyberpunk fan-fic.” Glamour magazine asked if Kim was “the biggest badass at the Paris Olympics.” Elon Musk got in on the act, too, but let’s not let him ruin this.
The device she was wearing isn’t actually a pair of glasses, but more like a miniature scaffolding that’s attached to her forehead and helps her perform. Above her left eye is a small black rectangle, a blinder that blocks one eye and allows for more focus in the other. Above her right eye is a small black circle, actually a relatively common piece of kit that has a mechanical iris to prevent blurring and allow for more focus on the target.
Then another clip of Kim in action began making the rounds, of her wearing the same “glasses” and with the same incredibly steady hand and android-like calm, but this time with her cap on backwards. The clip shows her firing her final shot, putting down her gun, lifting the blinder over her left eye, and giving an offstage look that was presumably meant to check the score, but to the viewer it looked like she was eyeing some unknown doubter with a sense of Arctic-cold pity.
That clip isn’t actually from the Olympics, but from the World Cup in Baku earlier this year. She set the world record in that competition, en route to winning the 25m pistol title. That’s what she’s aiming for in her other event, which takes place on Friday.
Kim, 31, is originally from Maepo, about 100 miles southeast of Seoul, and now lives in nearby Danyang. She has been competing since 2006 and won bronze in the 10m air pistol at the 2010 World Junior Championships. On her profile on the International Sports Shooting Federation website, she lists her hobbies simply as “sleeping.”
There was something else that only added to the sense that she was really a character in a Luc Besson film. Usually in those highly stylized stories, the killer has some kind of unusual affectation. Maybe it’s a fascination with a certain kind of music, or an adherence to an age-old code of conduct, or they have a pet parakeet that they’re strangely attached to, or something like that.
Kim participated with a stuffed elephant on her belt. You could dismiss it as an individual eccentricity, but it was actually a good luck charm from her five-year-old daughter, who is back home in Korea.
After the 10m medal ceremony, Kim told reporters that she couldn’t wait to tell her daughter all about her success. When asked what she was going to say about the medal and her newfound viral status, Kim said, “I guess I’ve become a little bit famous now.”
The only problem with all this, if you can call it that, is that Kim didn’t actually win. At least this time. The gold medal went to fellow American Oh Ye-jin, 12 years Kim’s junior, who beat her by just a few points, setting an Olympic record of 243.2. Kim scored 241.3, meaning they both broke the previous record of 240.3, set in Tokyo by Russia’s Vitalina Batsarashkina. India’s Manu Bhaker was far behind in third place.
Oh burst into tears after winning gold. “I still can’t believe that I’m wearing a gold medal around my neck,” Oh said. “Maybe when time passes, I will believe it. This medal is very heavy, by the way.”
Kim wasn’t the only one with a little calling card: for her it was the elephant, but Oh had a little purple heart on the end of her gun. Unfortunately not during the actual match, but only for the photos afterwards.
(Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)
But to make the story even more interesting, Kim was extremely happy for Oh, who is also her roommate in the athletes’ village in Paris.
“She’s like my little sister,” Kim told the Associated Press. “I always want to take care of her and always be there for her. So when she won the gold medal, I was extra happy.
“I don’t see her as my rival. This is a big stage, the Olympics, and we won gold and silver. When we won these medals, we were so proud to be Koreans.”
The way these kinds of things usually go, when a sporting event or an athlete essentially becomes a meme, is that they only grab people’s attention after the event and then disappear again, maybe until the next similar global event, when people say, “Oh yeah, I remember her.”
But this time, the internet will get a second chance to see Kim shoot in all her glory when she competes in the 25-meter pistol event on Friday. And she seems pretty confident she’ll do better than that.
“I always have confidence… I, Kim Yeji, will win gold, no matter what happens.”
(Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)
