Figure skaters You Young and Kim Ye-lim finished sixth and ninth in the women's singles at the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
This is the first time that two Korean skaters have made it to the top 10 in the event at the Olympics.
Since Kim Yu-na's gold medal at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and silver medal in Sochi in 2014, Korea's best result in the event had been Choi Da-bin's seventh place finish in Pyeongchang in 2018.
After finishing sixth with 70.34 points in the short program, You scored 142.75 points in the free skate on Thursday, earning a combined score of 213.09 points. Her personal best is 223.23 points, which she earned at the International Skating Union's Four Continents Figure Skating Championships in 2020.
Kim, who finished ninth with 67.78 points in the short program, scored 134.85 points in the free skate. She earned a combined score of 202.63 points, falling short of her personal best of 209.91 points achieved at the Four Continents Figure Skating Championships last month, where she won bronze.
Kamila Valieva of Russia, who was cleared to compete despite testing positive for a banned substance, finished fourth with a combined score of 224.09 points. Having been a gold-medal favorite, she topped the short program with 82.16 points but made multiple mistakes in the free skate and came out with 141.93 points.
Anna Shcherbakova of Russia claimed the gold medal with 255.95 points, and her compatriot Alexandra Trusova won silver with 251.73 points. Kaori Sakamoto of Japan took bronze with 233.13 points.
If Valieva had won a medal, the medal ceremony would have been postponed until the investigation into her doping case ends.
Travis Tygart, the head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, said the amount of trimetazidine found in Valieva’s sample was 2.1 nanograms per milliliter, which he described as "not a trace level." This suggests her argument that she tested positive because she used the same cup as her grandfather, who takes trimetazidine for a heart condition, was not convincing.
He said her case appeared to be a "pretty deliberate attempt to use substances in order to enhance performance."
