South Korean archer Kim Woo-jin won the men's individual title Sunday at the Paris Olympics, bagging his third gold medal and making Korea the first win in five Olympic archery events.
With Sunday's win, Kim became the third Korean ever to win three gold medals in a single Summer Olympics -- after his mixed team partner Lim Si-hyeon achieved the feat a day earlier -- and solidified his place as winner of most gold medals in the country's history.
This also marked the second time South Korea has completed a clean sweep of all archery events in the Olympics, having done so by winning individual and team events for both men and women at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. But the mixed team event was only added in the Tokyo Olympics -- in which the nation missed out on the men's individual title -- meaning South Korea is the only country to win five archery gold medals.
These two cases mark the only Olympic sweeps in archery for a country.
On a personal level, Kim now has won his first Olympic individual title. Despite his accolades, the seasoned veteran had never advanced past the elite eight in the individual tournaments of the Summer Games.
Kim’s win Sunday was a hard-earned one. He bested the world's top-ranked recurve archer Marcus D'Almeida of Brazil in the round of 16. He outlasted his team Lee Woo-suk in the semifinals before beating Brady Ellison of the US in a shoot-off of the finals by a hair. Both finalists shot 10 with their last arrows, but Kim’s shot was 4.9 millimeters closer to the center.
Other dominant Olympians in Korea
While Kim now stands alone with five Olympic gold medals, there have been other Koreans who dominated their sport at the Olympics. The list of four-time Korean gold medalists consists of shooter Jin Jong-oh, female archer Kim Soo-nyung and short track speedskater Chun Lee-kyung.
Jin and Kim Soo-nyung also won more medals than anyone in the country's history, with Jin winning two silver medals while Kim won one silver and one bronze. Winning six Olympic medals eluded even Kim Woo-jin, as he has never won medals other than gold.
Kim's mixed team partner Lim won three gold medals in Paris, which are the only Olympic medals in her career. But they were sufficient to get her into an elite group of three-time Olympic gold medalists including An San, the first Korean to win three gold medals in a single Summer Games.
Eight Olympic archers have won at least three gold medals in history, and all of them are from South Korea. Besides the aforementioned athletes, Park Sung-gyun, Ki Bo-bae and Yoon Mi-jin of the women's team and Kim Je-seok of the men's team have each won three golds.
Kim Je-deok is the youngest Korean ever to win three, having won his third in the men's team event in Paris just months after he turned 20 in April.
Gu Bon-gil of this year's champion saber fencing team also won the third gold medal of his career in the French capital.
Other three-time gold medalists are short track speedskaters Choi Min-jeong, Ahn Hyun-soo, who went on to become naturalized Russian citizen Viktor An, and speedskater Jin Sun-yu.
Speedskater Lee Seung-hoon won two Olympic gold medals, and he is the only other athlete besides Jin Jong-oh and Kim Soo-hyung to win six total Olympic medals. In addition to his two gold medals, he won three silver and one bronze medal.
Aside from the gold medalists, the first-ever Koreans to win medals at the Olympic Games were marathon runners Son Kee-chung and Nam Sung-yong. Son won gold while Nam won bronze medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Their medals belong to Japan in the record books as it colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945, but their feats were touted by their compatriots as a sign of hope during difficult times.
