Her name? Kim Ye-ji. Her game? Transfixing the entire internet—well, that and sharpshooting. Sure, there have been plenty of unsuspecting Olympic athletes who have captured the hearts of the world over the past few days—USA’s glasses-wearing dark horse in gymnastics, Brazil’s badass gymnast, the social media hero on USA’s women’s rugby team—but none have seemed to evoke quite response online that Kim has. Over the past few days, I have seen a nonstop flurry of viral thirst tweets and TikToks, like this one (from the account @LesbianService, if that tells you anything) with 8.6 million views declaring that she’s “the most cool person I’ve ever seen.” Kim has even made her way to my Instagram DMs from my less Olympic-obsessed friends, by way of a meme comparing her to a globally beloved and incredibly powerful character from a popular anime series. Whatever adjectives my fellow Gen Z compatriots are using these days to relay that someone’s simply got that je ne sais quoi—“rizz”? “Main character energy”? A high charting “aura”?—Kim seems to embody all of them at once. And still, the question on everyone’s lips seems to be: Who is she?
Kim first came to my attention on Monday via a tweet with photos of the sharpshooter with the caption “I need to talk about her.” In the photos, the unnamed athlete is wearing a black Fila lightweight jacket with the South Korean flag emblemized on her chest, a backward black baseball cap, and the intricately designed bionic glasses sharpshooters wear that make them look like they’re auditioning for a role in Star Trek. She has her arm outstretched, pistol in hand, and a stone-cold face that says she will shoot first, ask questions second, and, by God, she would not miss. Besides Carrie-Anne Moss herself, no one has ever looked like they’ve leapt out of The Matrix more than this woman.
It’s a simple truism for a select few out there: Some people on the internet are going to want them, some are going to want to be them, and some will internally wrestle with both desires. Kim is an example of that principle so strong that she should go down in the annals of aspirational-vibe history. But I—having been glued to Peacock’s excellent Olympics coverage since the parkouring masked torch bearer dazzled during the opening ceremony—recognized that the setting of this specific viral moment wasn’t the Paris Games at all. I went digging for answers. When was this, and where?
It turns out most of the images of Kim making the rounds on the web are from this year’s International Shooting Sport Federation World Cup in May, hosted in Baku, Azerbaijan. During the World Cup, she set a world record in the women’s 25-meter pistol event and received silver in the 10-meter air pistol event, behind another South Korean competitor, the 19-year-old Oh Ye-jin.
In both events, the shooter is shooting at one target for the duration of the event. But besides the obvious distance from the target evidenced by the events’ titles, they are also scored slightly differently. The 10-meter air pistol event involves a cumulative score of points related to the proximity of the shots to the target (similar to darts). In the 25-meter pistol competition, shooters are attempting to continuously “hit” within a defined zone (the 8.45 centimeter hit ring) at the center of the target, in 10 series of five shots each. For every hit they get one point, meaning a perfect performance would be a final cumulative score of 50. In Kim’s record-setting World Cup performance, she a scored an astonishing 42.
Prompted by her appearance at the Olympics, Kim’s presence at Baku has resurfaced and enamored the internet, receiving not only fan edits, fan art, and numerous thirst tweets (particularly from the LGBTQ+ community), but also her own entry on the meme-explainer site KnowYourMeme. More footage of her competing at other events has also popped up, her elite charisma evoking a character in an assassin game. Someone even tweeted that Hideo Kojima, the famed Japanese video game designer who paved the way for stealth games by creating the Metal Gear series, will “be on a zoom call with her within 30 days.” Not an unlikely thought, if that tweet’s viral engagement says anything.
And then there’s her actual appearance at this year’s Olympic Games, in which she took silver yet again in the 10-meter air pistol event (again, just behind fellow countrywoman and Olympic roommate Oh Ye-jin) on Sunday. Clips and photos from Paris haven’t circulated as widely as her showing at Baku, but her fierce affect at the Games has still ignited the passions of a world suddenly rapt by a sport many have never watched before. GQ posits that Kim may just have “the coldest style of this year’s Games thus far” in a piece that breaks down her entire ensemble. The highlight of her outfit, and a delightful contrast to her edgy cyberpunk vibe, is the elephant blanket dangling from her hip, which reportedly belongs to her 5-year-old daughter.
Kim’s rise is evidence of the best part about the Olympics: when new heroes get to emerge from obscurity. And there will likely be more Kim fever to come. The Olympics’ 25-meter pistol qualifiers aren’t until Friday.
