South Korean curlers, photo at right, are the Games’ breakout team
Stunning showing earning local fans
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea – South Korean curling skip Kim Eunjung is the reverse Superman of these Winter Games: Kim dons large, wire-framed glasses when she takes the ice, in the mirror image of Clark Kent returning to Earth, slapping on his spectacles and walking incognito into the front door of the Daily Planet building.
Curling is a sport of precision, so every tweak that brings her vision closer to 20/20 could pay off for the Korean women — and it has so far, with the country sitting atop the standings at 6-1 after a 9-6 win Tuesday against the USA. You can’t argue with the results.
Agile leapers and hulking sliders litter the Pyeongchang Games. But at Gangneung Curling Center, a different sort of athlete reigns. Each stands a few inches taller than 5 feet, and their leader barks orders like a drill sergeant, directing teammates to place stones here, here and here and to knock the opponents’ stones there, there and there. The team will almost always oblige.
And the captain wears glasses. Not since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has a four-eyed athlete exerted such control over his or her sport.
Fans aren’t really amused by questions about the team’s strengths.
“I don’t think it’s funny. They have to watch the curling ball very good, so they wear glasses to watch it better,” said Kim Hong-ki, 20, one of hundreds of South Koreans who flocked here to watch the country’s best team in competition. “I heard it is a very intelligent game. In speedskating or short track, they use muscle. They use brains in curling.”
Although South Korea has captured eight medals thus far, all but one has come in an individual event. Meanwhile, the curlers’ success has captivated locals pleasantly surprised — though not totally shocked — by the rise into heavy medal contention and drawn to the idea of a team of South Korea’s best standing tall against the world.
“Curling was not popular in Korea,” Kim Hong-ki said. “It was a surprise if they could make eighth or fourth. So I’m just surprised.”
Others were more confident: “I thought our team will be the best, the first place,” said Park Ho Yeol, 69, before admitting that no, he didn’t know too much about curling heading into the Winter Games.
But he’s catching on. So is the rest of the world. The South Korean women’s curling team is one of the breakout stars in Pyeongchang, combining success and home-country roots with the underdog status to write a story that could exist only at the Olympic Games.
“They’re a great team,” the USA’s Nina Roth said. “They’re very resilient. They have home-court advantage.”
Even in a country where variations on the last name Kim make up about one-fifth of the population, the Korean roster defies the odds: Kim Eun-jung is joined by teammates Kim Seon-yeong, Kim Kyeong-ae, Kim Yeong-mi and alternate Kim Cho-hi. Only two of the curlers, sisters Kyong-ae and Yeong-mi, are related.
So they’ve taken on nicknames from, of all places, what they like for breakfast. Eun-Jung is “Annie,” after the California-based yogurt brand. Seon-yeong is “Sunny,” as in sunny-side-up eggs. Kyeong-ae is “Steak,” and Cho-hi is “Chocho,” after a certain type of chocolate cookie.
Timing and location brought them into curling. The five hail from Uiseong, in the Gyeongsangbuk-do Province, a garlic-growing region that has lent the team another nickname — the “Garlic Girls.” (Their coach, Kim Min-jung, would like a prettier name and asked “the Internet to help.”) Uiseong is home to a curling center, built in 2006, and the women would curl as part of an afterschool program. It was lucky, Kim Minjung explained. It was there the team met a local professor and instructor, Kim Jyung-du, whom their coach credits with helping to create “this new history for Korean women.”
“We realize there is a lot of interest about our team,” Kim Min-jung said. “Some people are asking how this curling team suddenly appeared. But it wasn’t a sudden appearance. They had to practice for about 10 years. It’s not like they suddenly came down from the sky.”
Despite their relative youth — at 27, Kim Eun-jung is the oldest member of the team — the Korean curlers seem undaunted by more experienced opponents, defeating seasoned teams from Canada, Great Britain and the USA to stand one full game ahead of secondplace Sweden heading into the final day of qualification.
But steps have been taken to main- tain focus: The team members won’t use their phones during competition, for example, to make sure they stay off the Internet. Heading into the Games, the instructor, Kim Jyung-du, told the team, “Please come back alive,” their coach told reporters. Then the coach teared up and walked away. The message was meant to urge the curlers not to doubt themselves, an interpreter explained.
“During our play, we might lose our concentration so we should always focus,” Kim Seon-yeong said.
Focus, rapidly increasing experience and home-ice advantage have led to this: Once so inept as to not even qualify for the Winter Games — as was the case in 2011, when the International Olympic Committee awarded Pyeongchang the Games — and eighth in the world heading into this month, the Korean curlers are now destined for the semifinals, needing just one win there to net an entirely unexpected medal.
It’s enough to make South Korea stand up and take notice. While the men’s team again fails to put up a challenge, and as men’s and women’s hockey teams loaded with ringers struggle against even amateur competition, the female curlers have made the host country proud. Here in curling, at least, Korea’s best leads the world.
“It is rising right now,” Park Ho Yeol said of curling’s popularity. “Many Koreans will enjoy the Olympics in the future. My family prefers this game.”
“Some people are asking how this curling team suddenly appeared. But it wasn’t a sudden appearance. They had to practice for about 10 years.”
Kim Min-jung
South Korean curling coach