Kim Ye-ji: After becoming a new internet star, the South Korean shooter insists “not much has changed” since the Olympics.

CNN
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One might imagine a custom-designed, velvet-lined box as a safe and dignified place to store a first Olympic medal, but not Kim Ye-ji. The incredibly cool shooter happened to dig her silver medal out of the bottom of her backpack.

“Oh, here’s the medal,” Kim says. “No wonder my bag was heavy!”

The 32-year-old casually presented CNN Sport with the glowing award at her shooting range, nestled among endless trees on the mountainside of North Jeolla province, more than 200 kilometers (about 124 miles) south of the capital Seoul.

Banners on the streets of Imsil County congratulating Kim on Olympic glory are a quiet reminder of the viral fame she achieved this summer. Much louder are the photo shoots with luxury brands and numerous appearances on Korean television.

Earlier this year, the Internet fell in love with the South Korean for her ice-cold performance with a pistol at a World Cup in Baku, Azerbaijan, in May and then, more prominently, at the Paris Olympics, praising her “main character energy” and “the strongest aura I’ve ever seen in a painting.”

But when she puts down her pistol, her sharp expression morphs into a more relaxed demeanor, and she periodically raises her right eyebrow as she speaks, revealing a side not known to the masses.

“Not much changed after the Olympics,” she modestly tells CNN Sport.

Kim’s athletic career began when she raised her hand in response to an elementary school physical education teacher’s simple question: “Who wants to shoot?”

At the time, shooting was not yet a mainstream sport in South Korea, and the country had won a total of just seven medals – two gold, four silver and one bronze – from four Olympic Games when Kim took up the sport in 2005.

“I was so young back then and I just thought it would be fun,” she says. “From the beginning I didn’t think about taking it seriously and becoming a world-class athlete, it was just fun.”

Kim may have started photography without much of a dream, but she was talented enough to pursue it as a career and source of income.

“Initially I stuck with it to make money. When I did it for fun as a student, I tried to make money on a business team,” she says.

Shooting was nothing more than a job for Kim until she met her current coach Kwak Min-su on the Imsil County Office team in 2019.

“I started working hard after I met Coach Kwak. He was a very credible coach, so I wanted to work hard and pay him back,” she says of the coach who irons her Olympic jerseys out of love.

Hard work in addition to her natural talent only enhanced Kim’s career and helped increase her accuracy with the pistol. In April this year, she became the only South Korean shooter to qualify for the Paris Olympics in two events – 10-meter air pistol and 25-meter pistol – after finishing second in both events at the Korean national trials.

Then in May, she set the women’s 25-meter pistol world record in Baku, where the video of her peak concentration and “aura” on X went viral.

The enormous size of the Olympic stage can often make athletes nervous, especially those taking part in the Games for the first time. But that wasn’t the case with Kim.

“I didn’t feel much emotion during the 10-meter dash, I really enjoyed the games,” she said, while her South Korean teammate Oh Ye-jin was just two lanes away among the eight athletes taking part.

As the shooters fired simultaneously at their target, those with the lowest scores were eliminated until Kim and Oh became the final two competing for the gold medal. Kim finished the race with 241.3 points, 1.9 points behind Oh, but she remembers it as “a very happy moment.”

“There were some regrets, but that’s a regret that comes after every game. “It’s not because I didn’t win a gold medal, it’s because I didn’t do my job properly,” says Kim.

Just days after standing on the podium, Kim experienced “emotional drama” in the women’s 25-meter pistol qualifying round but still managed to keep her composure. In the 11th qualifying round, she scored no points after failing to shoot within the allotted three seconds, reducing her chances of advancing to the final.

“That mistake wasn’t the end of the games, so I calmed myself down by thinking about the next round of shots,” Kim says.

Despite refocusing and scoring 10 points on 16 of the remaining 19 shots, she failed to qualify for the final.

Icon of charisma and style

It wasn’t just Kim’s charisma that caught the attention of those watching the Games, but also her style – a plush elephant-themed towel with her name tag attached, a backwards cap and futuristic shooting glasses.

Although she wears a look to competitions that wouldn’t be out of place in a Blade Runner movie, Kim defines herself as a “simple dresser” who likes to wear crop tops and white jeans on days off and on training or event days wearing their team uniform.

“I dress super plain, simple. But people tell me I look good,” she says.

Although she sometimes dresses modestly, Kim says the plush elephant towel hanging from her hip is a must for all competitions, as are her hat, goggles and shoes for shooting.

“When I shoot, I get gunpowder on my hand, so I carry a towel to wipe off the powder,” she says.

Although she remains modest when it comes to being called a “fashion icon,” Kim has done numerous photoshoots with renowned brands like Louis Vuitton and Givenchy, winning the hearts of her fans along the way.

“Did you run out of target boards? Why do you keep shooting at my heart…” one fan commented on her Instagram post from the Louis Vuitton shoot.

Kim even earned the admiration of Elon Musk, who commented on a video of her competition in Baku that she “should be cast in an action movie.” An executive producer must have been listening when Kim (of course) landed a role as an assassin in the series Crush, a spin-off series of the film Asia.

“I’m an athlete, so I never thought about acting in films, but if I was labeled a shooter and it was an opportunity for more people to learn about shooting, I would like to take part in it,” Kim says about her cameo role before it was publicly announced.

During photo shoots, interviews and commercials, Kim doesn’t forget that she is, above all, a shooter.

“I am grateful that people call me a fashion icon. But I’m an athlete, so shooting is part of my life,” she says.

Since Kim started shooting, South Korea has seen several heroes in the sport, including Jin Jong-oh, who won four gold and two silver medals at five Olympics, and Kim Jang-mi, who won at the 2012 London Olympics won gold.

At the Paris Olympics, South Korea won the most shooting medals in the country’s history with three gold and three silver medals. And as the country gradually improves, Kim hopes to spread the word about the sport.

To this end, it is already eyeing the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and is preparing step by step, starting with the final of the ISSF World Cup, which will take place in India later this month.

As if the self-motivation wasn’t enough, Kim has promised her six-year-old daughter that she will become an Olympic champion in the next edition of the Games. When she won silver in Paris, her daughter shouted, “Mommy, you won silver!” but quickly added that she should win gold next time.

“Just wait, mommy will win the gold,” Kim promised.