Player who hardly smiles

Kim Il Gyong, who was chosen as one of the top ten players of the DPRK in 2023 again after 2022, is a woman weightlifter of the April 25 Combat Sports Team.

Since she started her career as a weightlifter, she has immersed herself in training by displaying her natural aptitude and amazing perseverance and fortitude.

In order to attain her goal, she would continue to think to complete technical movements in her mind even during breaks in training and perform them in practice to make sure they were successful.

Her diligence, sincerity and great perseverance earned her the honour of victor.

She achieved good results at the 2017 World Junior Weightlifting Championships and the 2018 Asian Junior and Youth Weightlifting Championships and on this basis fully demonstrated her ability in national and international competitions.

In particular, Kim renewed a world record in snatch of the women’s 59kg category weightlifting and set new Asian Games records in jerk of the same category and total respectively at the 19th Asian Games last year, thereby winning three gold medals.

As a result, she joined the ranks of the world record holders in women’s weightlifting at home.

One of her characteristics is that unlike other winners she hardly smiles for excitement and joy.

Her colleagues who trained with her say they thought her saturnine as they could hardly see her smile, but her good results in competitions enabled them to read her thoughts and know the value of smile.

Kim won three gold medals again in the women’s 59kg category of the 2024 Asian Weightlifting Championships held this February.

Competitive player

Ri Chong Song, a weightlifter of the April 25 Combat Sports Team, began to learn weightlifting at the then Juvenile Sports School of the Weightlifting Gymnasium on Chongchun Street in Pyongyang.

Like other successful players, Ri also directed effort to acquiring basic techniques correctly.

Attaching importance to anything practicable, he put his heart and soul into every training movement so that they could be successful in practice.

He seriously accepted all training tasks given by his instructor and perfectly carried them out. And he did not tolerate lagging behind others or being similar to them.

His enthusiasm for training and competitiveness bubbled up after he began his career as weightlifter at the then April 25 Sports Club.

Under the guidance of coach Ri Chol Nam, he won six gold medals in total and set three new national records at the event of the men’s 81kg category weightlifting at national events held in 2021.

Later, his competitiveness led him to international events and winner’s podium.

He won the men’s 81kg category of weightlifting at the 19th Asian Games held last year by snatching 169kg (new Asian Games record) and jerking 195kg with 364kg in total (new Asian Games record).

He also won the same category at the 2023 IWF Grand Prix in December last year against experts’ expectations that a player of a country would win as he had renewed world records at two body weights.

He went on to win the men’s 81kg category at the 2024 Asian Weightlifting Championships held this February, bagging three gold medals.

He has now been selected as one of the top ten players of the DPRK twice.