Korea renews its record in men’s 400m individual medley

The Korean national team participating in the men's 400-meter medley relay set a new Korean record at the 2023 International Swimming Federation World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, on Sunday. Korea achieved eight records at the championship, making it the most number of records set by Korea in the history of the world championships for swimming. This accomplishment surpassed the previous record of six records set during the 2019 Gwangju Games.

On Sunday, the final day of the event, the men's 400-meter national team participated in the preliminaries of the medley relay, setting a time of 3:34:25. This timing was 0.71 seconds faster than the previous Korean record of 3:34:96. Despite their outstanding performance, they secured the 10th position overall in the preliminaries, which meant they did not advance to the finals. The medley relay race consisted of four different strokes — backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and freestyle. Lee Ju-ho, Choi Dong-yeol, Kim Yeong-beom, and Hwang Seon-woo took turns to swim.

Hwang Seon-woo, the shining star of Korean swimming, made his mark by setting four Korean records while participating in multiple events, including the 100-meter and 200-meter freestyle and the 800-meter relay. In the 200-meter freestyle final, he set a new Korean record. Hwang won a bronze medal at 1:44:42. Similarly, in the 800-meter freestyle relay, he impressively broke the Korean record during both the preliminaries and finals. He narrowly missed setting a new Korean record only in the 100-meter freestyle. During the semi-finals of this event, Hwang recorded a time of 48.08 seconds, placing ninth overall, failing to advance to the final, where only the top 8 players proceed. The current Korean record for the men's 100-meter freestyle stands at 47.56 seconds, set by Hwang at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.


Bae-Jung Kim wanted@donga.com