Yeji Kim: The Olympic sharpshooter who's won hearts worldwide

The sport shooter won an Olympic silver medal in her discipline. However, her viral popularity on social media is due to her "aura".

South Korean sharpshooter Yeji Kim became a star of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, not just for her sporting prowess. Kim clinched silver in the 10-metre air pistol shooting event, placing right behind her compatriot Ye-jin Oh, who took the gold. While Kim's Olympic performance garnered her many new fans, a video clip recorded during competitions in May sparked a wave of admiration and excitement on social media.

Riding the wave of interest in Kim, a recording from another competition went viral. The athlete is a two-time World Championship medallist, having competed in May 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan. In footage from this event, the Korean appears as a character from an action movie or a video game. Wearing futuristic glasses, she casually aims and reloads the pistol without changing her facial expression, even though she broke the world record in her discipline at that very moment.

Social media went wild over the "ice-cold" shooter. A viral post on X asked: "How is she real?". Meanwhile, on TikTok, the most popular comment on the video from the Azerbaijan competition was: "Face card and pose are lethal". "Face card" is a term used on social media to describe someone who is so beautiful or attractive that they can get whatever they want, like an unlimited credit card.

Kim's character is even more intriguing because her "unflappable" image has touching highlights. One user on X wrote, "All that aura, while she was simultaneously holding her cute, tiny elephant doll." Aura is the latest term for being impressive, strong, and charismatic. The little elephant Kim holds in her left hand while shooting belongs to her daughter.

In an interview with the Associated Press after winning the silver medal at the Paris Olympics, Yeji Kim expressed her joy over her younger teammate's success, who won gold. She confessed, "She is like my youngest sister, and I always want to take care of her and be there for her. So when she won the gold medal, I was very happy." Oh is 12 years younger than Kim, who is 31.

Yeji Kim will compete in another Olympic event on 2 August. This time, she will shoot an air pistol at a target 25 metres away. Surely, many new fans who had never been interested in sports shooting before will be watching her performance.