Joo Jeong-hun wins bronze in Paris Paralympics

"I plan to visit my grandmother's grave with the medal and beef I promised before coming to Paris,” Taekwondo practitioner Joo Jeong-hun said. On Sunday, he won a bronze medal in the men's 80-kg K44 category at the Paris Paralympics.

After winning a bronze medal at the 2021 Tokyo Paralympics, Joo returned home and visited his grandmother, who was in a nursing home due to dementia, as the first person to share his achievement. This time, he expressed his intention to dedicate his medal to his late grandmother once again.

His deep affection for his grandmother stems from the fact that he was raised at her home in Haman County, South Gyeongsang Province, during his childhood. Since both of his parents worked, his grandmother, Kim Boon-seon, took care of him. When he was two years old, Joo wandered outside while his grandmother briefly stepped away, and he accidentally put his right hand into a cattle feed cutter, resulting in the disability he has today. From then on, whenever Kim saw her son, daughter-in-law, and Joo, she would cry, feeling like she was to blame. Although he doesn't remember the accident, his grandmother lived with a sense of guilt for the rest of her life.

Joo always felt sorry for his grandmother, who felt deeply guilty over the incident. It wasn't until 2018 that his grandmother stopped shedding tears—not because the guilt had faded, but because dementia had taken away her memories, and she could no longer recognize her grandson. When he visited her after the Tokyo Paralympics, she still did not recognize him. A few months later, she passed away. When Joo received news that his grandmother was critically ill, he rushed to the nursing home, but he was unable to be by her side when she passed. Instead, he was told that she had called out his name before she died.

Afterward, Joo continued to push forward with his grandmother in his heart. Before departing for Paris, he visited her grave and promised, "After the competition, I'll bring a gold medal along with some beef (which you always loved)." Joo easily advanced through the round of 16 and the quarterfinals but fell short in the semifinals against Luis Mario Najera from Mexico. Despite experiencing pain in his left hip, which his opponent's knee had struck during the quarterfinals, he endured the discomfort and competed until the end. In the bronze medal match, Joo defeated Nurlan Dombayev from Kazakhstan 7-1, securing his second consecutive bronze medal. Although it wasn't the gold medal he had desperately wanted, he had no regrets because he gave it his all.


파리=김정훈기자 hun@donga.com