Members of the Korean women’s curling team competing at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics pose during the delegation launch ceremony at Seoul Olympic Parktel in Seoul, Jan. 2. From left are Kim Min-ji, Seol Ye-eun, Kim Su-ji, Seol Ye-ji and Gim Eun-ji. Yonhap
The sport of curling burst into the national consciousness in 2018, when the women’s team led by Kim Eun-jung claimed the silver medal at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, South Korea’s first medal in the sport.
The bespectacled skip became a minor celebrity, as her screams to get her teammates to sweep harder went viral, and her teammates also won over people’s hearts with their down-to-earth demeanor.
At this year’s Milan-Cortina Games, a new women’s team representing South Korea will try to top the 2018 squad’s achievement and bring home the historic gold medal.
Gim Eun-ji, who made her Olympic debut in 2014 as the youngest member of the team, is back as the skip for a quartet of first-time Olympians: Kim Min-ji, Kim Su-ji, Seol Ye-ji and Seol Ye-eun.
At No. 3 in World Curling’s team rankings behind Rachel Homan’s Canada and Silvana Tirinzoni’s Switzerland, Gim and Co. have enjoyed some international success over the past couple of years, a run highlighted by the bronze medal at the 2024 world championships in Sydney behind Canada and Switzerland.
And it is those two countries that the South Korean curlers have already identified as their biggest hurdles at the Olympics.
There will be 10 teams in the women’s tournament and the top four teams after nine round-robin matches will advance to the semifinals. Kim Su-ji predicted in January it would take at least six wins for South Korea to make it to the knockout phase.
South Korea will open its competition against Japan on Feb. 12, with the home team Italy coming up later the same day. South Korea will face Switzerland on Feb. 17 and Canada on Feb. 19.
All matches will be played at Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium in Cortina d’Ampezzo, about 400 kilometers northeast of Milan.
South Korea didn’t qualify for the men’s competition but will have a team in the mixed doubles, with Kim Seon-yeong and Jeong Yeong-seok in action.
Kim competed on Kim Eun-jung’s teams in both 2018 and 2022, and she will now become the first South Korean curler to appear at three consecutive Winter Olympics. Jeong will be in his first Olympics.
The duo grabbed their Olympic ticket at the last-chance qualifying event in Canada in December.
They will open their Olympics later Wednesday, two days before the opening ceremony, with a round-robin match against Sweden. It is the very first official event for the entire South Korean delegation at this year’s Olympics.
The mixed team competition takes the same format as the women’s, with 10 countries playing each other in the round robin to vie for the four spots in the next phase.