Sports leaders who left Korea and made their name abroad are back and holding the baton안전놀이터. Attention is focusing on whether those who were once enemies will contribute to the revival of Korean sports.
At the 2023 ITTF World Table Tennis Championships held in Durban, South Africa, Korean table tennis team Jeon Ji-hee and Shin Yu-bin received applause as they advanced to the women’s doubles final 36 years after Yang Young-ja and Hyun Jung-hwa (gold medalist) in New Delhi in 1987.
The pair Jeon Ji-hee and Shin Yu-bin garnered national attention by defeating the world No. 1 team, China’s Sun Yingxia and Wang Man-wi, 3-0 in the semifinals. In the finals that followed, Jeon Ji-hee and Shin Yu-bin, who once again faced off against the strong Chinese players, were defeated by Chen Meng-Wang Yi-di, but achieved a valuable result of finishing second.
Coach Oh Kwang-heon, who nurtured the key players of the world’s second-best Japanese women’s national team, was the leader of the women’s national table tennis team this time.
Director Oh, who moved to Japan in 1995 after serving as a coach at the prestigious Seoul Women’s Award, drew attention by leading Shukudoku University to the top of Japan. .
In this process, he contributed to the bronze medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics, runner-up at the World Championships in the same year, and victory at the World Junior Championships. Japan women’s national team aces Mima Ito, Miu Hirano, and Hina Hayata are all students of coach Oh.
Coach Oh, who returned to Korea in 2017 and led the men’s unemployment team Boram Hallelujah, also showed his skills in Korea. He served as the first coach of Boram Halleluya Table Tennis Team in 2016, won the team championship and individual singles at the Hiroshima International Table Tennis Championships in Japan in 2018, runner-up and individual singles champion at the 2021 Presidential Cup team event, and won the men’s team event at the 75th Pixelscope National Men’s and Women’s Comprehensive Table Tennis Championships in 2022 Achieved achievements such as runner-up.
Manager Oh, who seemed to be settling down, quit her stable job and took charge of the women’s national team for a one-year term. Coach Oh plans to devote herself to enhancing the competitiveness of the women’s national team, which is lagging behind Japan.
Even in the short track, a winter event, you can see the face that went abroad and returned again.
Short track coach Kim Seon-tae, who coached Korea at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics and China at the 2022 Beijing Games, recently returned as Seongnam City Hall coach.
Coach Kim was punished for negligent management and was suspended for one year in the case of sexual violence within the short track team after the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics. Accordingly, Coach Kim went to China and faced South Korea at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, where he received an unfavorable look. Even in the midst of this, Coach Kim proved his leadership by bringing two gold medals to China.
The wave was great. Earlier this year, when coach Kim applied for an open recruitment for ice team coaches at Seongnam City Hall, short track coaches in Korea opposed it.
However, six short track skaters belonging to Seongnam City Hall, including Choi Min-jeong, Lee Jun-seo, Kim Gun-hee, Kim Gil-li, Kim Da-gyeom, and Seo Beom-seok, issued a statement and voiced their voices, saying, “Please select a leader based on skill.” In the end, coach Kim took the baton.
Coach Kim, who took the helm again in Korea after boiling his insides, will take on the task of improving the skills of top players such as Choi Min-jung, Kim Gil-li, Lee Jun-seo, and Kim Da-gyeom. Choi Min-jung and Kim Gil-li are the main players of the national team. Coach Kim’s guidance is expected to be directly related to the national team’s performance.
In particular, Choi Min-jeong, who is called the queen of short track speed skating after winning two consecutive Winter Olympics, failed to win a gold medal at the World Championships held in Seoul last March, being beaten by Dutch athletes such as Schisaner Swielting and Sandra Belzebourg. Choi Min-jeong, who refused to even her Taegeuk mark in the 2023-2023 season and predicted her improvement and new strategy, is expected to aim for a new leap with coach Kim.