Huh Mi-mi, a 22-year-old descendant of a Korean independence activist, captured a silver medal in the women’s judo 57kg class at the Olympics, marking South Korea’s best performance in women’s judo in eight years.
In the 2016 Rio Olympics, Jeong Bo-kyeong won a silver medal in the women’s judo 48kg class, and Huh Mi-mi secured a silver medal, achieving S. Korea’s best performance in eight years. S. Korean women’s judo did not win any medals at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
World-ranked No. 3 Huh Mi-mi lost by penalty to top-ranked Christa Deguchi in the women’s judo 57kg final held at the Champ de Mars Arena in Paris, France, on July 29. Deguchi, a Japanese-Canadian athlete, is a star with two world championship titles. Huh Mi-mi had defeated Deguchi in the final of the world championships last May, but this time she could not overcome the challenge.
Wearing a blue Judo-gi(Judo uniform), Huh Mi-mi attempted an over-the-shoulder throw from the beginning, and both received penalties with 3 minutes and 2 seconds left. Then, Huh Mi-mi received another penalty with 1 minute and 56 seconds remaining.
The match eventually went into ‘Golden Score,’ a sudden death overtime period used in judo where the first score wins the match, with a 0-0 tie. Deguchi, who had been passive, received a penalty 1 minute and 48 seconds into the overtime. Both athletes now had two penalties. However, Huh Mi-mi received another penalty 2 minutes and 35 seconds into overtime, resulting in a loss by penalty.
Earlier, Huh Mi-mi passed the round of 32 with a bye and won by penalty against Timna Nelson Levy (Israel) in the round of 16. In the quarterfinals, she achieved a half-point win against Mongolia’s Enkhriilen Lkhagvatogoo, who had been considered her rival.
Despite Lkhagvatogoo being ranked lower, she had beaten Huh Mi-mi in three previous encounters before the Olympics. Huh Mi-mi had lost to Lkhagvatogoo in the bronze medal matches at the World Championships in the past two years and in the final of the Asian Championships this year, but she avenged those defeats on the biggest stage. In the semifinals, Huh Mi-mi defeated Brazil’s Rafaela Silva by half-point in a pinning technique.
Huh Mi-mi was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 2002 to a Korean father and a Japanese mother. Although she grew up in Japan, she started judo at the age of six, following her father, a judo athlete who maintained his Korean nationality. In her third year of middle school, she won the All-Japan Middle School Judo Championships and emerged as a promising judo talent in Japan. However, in 2021, she decided to move to Korea.
The reason she decided to move to Korea was to follow the last wish of her grandmother, who had lived as a Korean in Japan and had expressed her hope that Mi-mi would compete in the Olympics as a representative of Korea. Huh Mi-mi joined the Gyeongbuk Athletic Association and proudly wore the South Korean national emblem in February the following year.
After holding dual nationality for a while, she gave up her Japanese nationality last year and became a Korean citizen. Her younger sister, Huh Mi-o (20), is also currently competing as an athlete for the Athletic Association.
Moreover, Huh Mi-mi is well-known as a descendant of an independence activist. She is the fifth-generation descendant of Huh Seok (1857-1920), who was arrested and imprisoned by Japanese police for posting anti-Japanese flyers in Gunwi County, Gyeongbuk Province, in 1918 during the Japanese colonial period. Huh Seok, who was sentenced to one year in prison, passed away three days after his release and was posthumously awarded the Order of Merit for National Foundation in 1991.
