Person1990

Kim Yu-na

Also called: Yuna Kim, Kim Yuna, Kim Yeon-a

South Korean figure skater who won the women’s singles at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics with a world-record score, Korea’s first Olympic figure-skating medal, and took silver at Sochi in 2014; she lit the cauldron at the 2018 PyeongChang opening ceremony

Born in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, she began skating at seven. She won the World Junior Championships in 2006 and in 2009 became world champion, the first woman to score over 200 points in total. At the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics she won with a world-record 228.56, making Korea’s first Olympic figure-skating medal a gold. After taking silver at Sochi in 2014 she retired; she campaigned as an ambassador for PyeongChang’s Olympic bid and lit the cauldron at the opening ceremony of the 2018 Games.

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3 related events

1
20102010 Vancouver Winter Olympicsparticipant
Games at Vancouver, Canada, where Kim Yu-na won the women’s figure skating with a world-record score.
2
20142014 Sochi Winter Olympicsparticipant
Russia’s first Winter Olympics, at Sochi on the Black Sea coast; state-directed doping later came to light and Russia was stripped of many medals.
3
20182018 PyeongChang Winter Olympicsparticipant
South Korea’s second Olympics, thirty years after Seoul, and its first Winter Games. The two Koreas marched together and fielded a joint women’s ice-hockey team, and a visit by a high-level North Korean delegation led on to inter-Korean summits.

People who appear alongside

Moon Jae-in1953
19th President (2017–2022). Held three inter-Korean summits in 2018, beginning at Panmunjom
Kim Jong Un
Son of Kim Jong Il and leader of North Korea since 2011; his birth year is unconfirmed

Themes this person appears in

Inter-Korean Relations: Thaw and Freeze1953 – 2024
From the armistice to “two hostile states” — inter-Korean relations, thawed by talks and exchanges and frozen again by provocations and clashes
Winter Olympics1924 – 2026
From the “International Winter Sports Week” at Chamonix to PyeongChang and Milano Cortina — a century on snow and ice, with Korea’s first appearance and first gold