A donated bow on Namsan, and a sport of the nerves

Korean archery, the notes write, began almost by chance. In 1960 a physical-education teacher they name Seok Bong-geun happened on a bow and was practicing at Seokhojeong on Namsan when, in 1962, a lieutenant colonel serving in the US Eighth Army brought archery bows and donated several. Bamboo arrows were fitted to those bows, and that, they say, was the start. On 27 July 1963, they add, Korea formally joined an international federation as a full member — the body the notes call an international federation, left as they write it, not silently renamed. The shortest road onto the international stage, they argue, was to make the equipment at home. Cha Gyeong-hyeon, who had been working at that steadily, began to make bows in 1969, and later produced ones good enough to export.

In sport, they write, there are practice athletes and competition athletes. Technique does not change much between a practice and a meet; the psychological state does. Archery, they add, is a typical psychological sport, and so a good place to study anxiety and the ways of overcoming it.

Three tens scored zero, and two hits on a lens

At a 1988 selection, trying to loosen tension, Kim Kyung-wook kept telling herself it was only practice, and pulled the arrows before the judges had seen them. Three arrows worth ten points each were scored zero. She then failed selection for the 1990 Asian Games and for the 1992 Olympics, and worked through those defeats with harsh training and self-discipline. The spoiled trial is read, in this account, as a case in which an excess of trying to manage tension actually clouded judgement.

The highlight is the Atlanta Olympic final. She hit a tiny camera lens set at the very center of the target, hard enough, they write, to break it, and earned the nickname Perfect Gold. Of twelve arrows, the sixth was the first Perfect Gold, the tenth the second, and she overwhelmed her opponent. Those shots stay as the notes place them, not enlarged into a later official medal table.

Five years later, twenty-seven years in all

She later returned to the national team after five years, and in 2008, they write, ended twenty-seven years as an active athlete. The report wants the missed selection and the Olympic final read against the same measure — the regulation of tension — and it leans on degree papers about psychological skill and the recognition of strengths. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. The notes, a student sports-psychology report on Kim Kyung-wook and Perfect Gold, with the 1988 zero, the Atlanta final, and the 2008 retirement left as the notes record them.

Last updated: 15 November 2026