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• ●The country has long dominated Olympic archery with 27 gold medals – nearly double the count of the sport’s 2nd most successful country (USA, 14).
  

• ●The prolific medalists on Korea’s Olympic archery squad won their places through tough national competitions.

South Korea proved itself again as a global archery powerhouse at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

The country has scored gold medals in four of the five archery events – mixed team, women’s team, men’s team and women's individual -- led by the newest standouts, An San and Kim Je-deok.
 
With this feat, South Korea now leads all other nations with a total of 27 gold medals in archery racked up since Seo Hyang-sun snagged the country’s first gold in the sport at the 1984 L.A. Summer Olympics. Previous archery powerhouses Belgium and France had nearly a century’s lead, each having won three gold medals at the 1900 Paris Olympics.
 
What’s more remarkable is that South Korea has won every gold medal for archery in the women’s team category since it was first included at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul – that’s nine consecutive gold medals over the span of three decades.
 
South Korea’s domination of Olympic archery has caused fans of the sport to wonder how the country can be so formidable.
 
Some cite the country’s long history of manufacturing exquisite composite reflex bows, dating back to ancient Gojoseon (Korea’s first kingdom, circa 2333-108 BCE), as well as the popularity of archery during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910).
 
But former and current gold medalists credit the selection process for the national team – which is half-jokingly described as being much more difficult than the Olympics. They emphasize its transparency and fairness as the key factors behind the country’s success.
 
In fact, for this year’s summer games, the Korea Archery Association (KAA) hosted a total of five Olympic trials – instead of the usual three – to pick the best archers within a six-month period. In March 2020, the organization was still in the process of selecting the national team when it was announced that the Tokyo Olympics would be postponed by one year due to the spread of COVID-19.
 
To ensure that “the best of the best athletes are representing Korea at the time of the Olympics,” the KAA decided to scrap the results of the two Olympic trials held in 2020 and start the whole selection process from scratch this year. There were no exceptions made for anyone: Even Ki Bo-bae, a three-time Olympic gold medalist, failed to pass the national team’s selection round.
 
“It [the force behind the country’s archery power] comes from the fact that the organization makes us compete infinitely against each other,” Ki said during an interview with KBS Sports.
 
An San, this year’s two-time gold medalist from the mixed team and women's team events, also named the transparent selection process as the factor behind the national team’s success.
 
“During the first round of the selection process, it was devastating to see that I was ranked 49th. Since then, I’ve prepared my own solutions to rise through the ranks.”
 
But it’s not just the seemingly infinite competition among athletes that helps South Korea defend its archery title. The KAA has been known over the years for leading unique training sessions to build its athletes’ physical and mental strength. These include a military boot camp, diving, hiking and marching at night. Sometimes, the archers are placed in the middle of baseball stadiums during intermissions, where the opposing teams, their mascots and fans are encouraged to make as much noise as possible to test their concentration as they aim for perfect scores.
 
Within the KAA’s Jincheon National Training Center in Chungcheongbuk-do Province, the organization constructed a nearly exact replica of Yumenoshima Park Archery Field, the venue for the Tokyo Olympics. It also prepared archers against such uncontrollable natural variables as sea gusts and earthquakes by building another facility on a small island off Sinan, Jeollanam-do Province.
 
“We trained as if we were at the actual Olympics every day. The lights were never turned off at our archery center in Jincheon,” said Kang Chae-young, gold medalist from the women’s team event in Tokyo.

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