Kim Yeji: The Paris Olympics’ coolest athlete and a South Korean superstar

It’s certainly a striking look.

Looking like something between an expert diamond dealer and a crack sniper for some renegade sci-fi army, the internet’s new favourite Olympian, South Korean pistol shooter Kim Yeji, is one of the Paris Games’ most notable stars so far.

This is the great thing about the Olympics. Before the games you’re looking forward to all the stuff you knew about before: maybe Sha’Carri Richardson in the athletics, Andy Murray’s farewell in the tennis or Simone Biles in the gymnastics.

But then there’s the stuff that you didn’t know you cared about, until you see it. And an incredibly cool-looking pistol shooter most certainly falls into that category.

Kim crashed into the online consciousness after she competed in the first of her two events in Paris, the 10m air pistol on Sunday.

The X account ‘Women Posting Ws’, which seems to be the root source of her viral status, wrote alongside a picture of Kim shooting at the target, back slightly arched, her shoulder high with her chin resting on it and her non-shooting hand in her pocket, that it was “the most aura I have ever seen in an image”.

(Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

The social media consensus seemed to be that Kim looked like some sort of robo-assassin from an action film, a killer from the near future that doesn’t need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle, because she looks plenty 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 is “the biggest badass of the Paris Olympics?” Elon Musk got involved too, but let’s not allow him to ruin it.

The contraption she wore isn’t actually a pair of glasses as such, more a sort of miniature scaffolding attached to her forehead that aid her performance. Over her left eye is a small black rectangle, a blinder that blocks out one eye and allows greater focus in the other. Over her right eye was a small black circle, actually a relatively common bit of kit that features a mechanical iris to help avoid blurring and allows greater focus on the target.

Subsequently, another clip of Kim in action started to do the rounds, of her in the same ‘glasses’ and with the same incredibly steady hand and android-esque calm, but with her cap on backwards this time. The clip shows her shoot her final shot, put down her pistol, lift up the blinder over her left eye and give an off-stage look that presumably was to just check the score, but to the viewer looked like she was eyeballing some unspecified doubter with a sense of Arctic-cold pity.

That clip isn’t actually from the Olympics, rather the World Cup in Baku earlier this year. She set the world record in that competition, on her way to winning the 25m pistol title. That’s the one she’ll be aiming for in her other event, which takes place on Friday.

Kim is 31, originally from Maepo, which is about 100 miles south-east of Seoul, and now lives in nearby Danyang. She’s been competing since 2006, and won bronze at the 2010 World Junior Championships in the 10m air pistol. On her profile on the International Sports Shooting Federation website, under ‘hobbies’ she simply lists ‘sleeping’.

There was another thing that only enhanced the sense that she is actually a character from a Luc Besson film. Usually in those highly stylised stories, the assassin has some form of unusual affectation. Maybe it’s a fascination for a particular type of music, or an adherence to an ancient code of conduct, or they have a pet budgie that they’re weirdly devoted to or something.

Kim was competing with a stuffed toy elephant strapped to her belt. Which you could put down as an individual eccentricity, but in fact it was a sort of lucky charm that belongs to 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 new-found viral status, Kim said: “I think I have become a bit famous now.”

The one problem with all this, if you can call it that, is that Kim didn’t actually win. On this occasion, at least. The gold medal went to her compatriot Oh Ye-jin, 12 years Kim’s junior, who edged her out by just a couple of points, setting an Olympic record of 243.2. Kim scored 241.3, meaning they both beat the previous record of 240.3, set by Russia’s Vitalina Batsarashkina in Tokyo. India’s Manu Bhaker was a way back in third.

Oh burst into tears after winning gold. “I still cannot believe I’m wearing a gold medal on my neck right now,” said Oh. “Maybe as time goes by, I will believe it. This medal is very heavy, by the way.”

Kim wasn’t alone in having a little calling card: while for her it was the elephant, Oh had a little purple heart on the end of her pistol — not, unfortunately, while she was actually competing, but just for the pictures afterwards.

(Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

But just to add to the wholesome nature of the whole story, Kim could not have been more delighted 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 care for her and always be there for her. So when she won the gold medal, I was extra happy.

“I do not view her as my rival. This is a big stage, the Olympics, and we won the gold and silver. When we won these medals, we were so proud we are Koreans.”

The way with these things usually, when a sporting occasion or an athlete essentially becomes a meme, is that they come to people’s attention after the event, and are then gone, perhaps until the next comparable global event when people say, “Oh yeah, I remember her.”

However, this time the internet will have a second chance to witness Kim in all of her shooting glory when she competes in the 25-metre pistol event on Friday. And she seems pretty sure she’ll go one better, too.

“I am confident all the time… I, Kim Yeji, am going to win gold, no matter what.”

(Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)