[Courtesy of InStyle]
Former Olympic figure skating champion Kim Yuna has been selected as this year's "sports hero" who will enter South Korea's sports Hall of Fame, the Korean Olympic Committee said Tuesday.
The committee said Kim was among six final candidates including LPGA Hall of Famer Pak Seri, former Major League Baseball pitcher Park Chan-ho and former Bundesliga football star Cha Bum-kun.
A panel of experts has selected Kim for contributing to sports development and boosting South Korea's national prestige, the committee said.
The committee began selecting its sports hero from 2011. Its first Hall of Famer was marathoner Sohn Kee-chung, the first Korean to win an Olympic gold medal as a member of the Japanese delegation at the 1936 Berlin Olympics when the Korean peninsula was under Japan's colonial rule.
Kim, who won gold at the Vancouver Games, now serves as honorary ambassador for the 2018 Winter Olympics in the eastern ski resort of Pyeongchang. She was one of the key figures in Pyeongchang's successful bid for the 2018 Games.
The 26-year-old was South Korea's most popular sporting figure until her retirement and single-handedly made the sport popular back home.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
