North Korea has recorded its first Asian Winter Games medal in eight years, as its figure skaters took bronze in the pair skating event Saturday at the winter Asiad now under way in Kazakhstan, officials said Sunday.
North Korea's Yi Ji-hyang and Tae Won-hyuk finished last in the Asian Winter Games' pair skating but were awarded a bronze as only three teams competed in the event, said the officials.
The bronze marked the North's first medal of any color in the two consecutive winter Asiads.
The reclusive communist state, which finished the previous Asian Winter Games in Changchun, China, in 2007 without any medal, had failed to send any of its athletes to the medal podium in the first five days of Kazakhstan's winter Asiad.
The no-medal performance in 2007 was a shock to North Korea, which sent 66 athletes there.
In the 2003 Asian Winter Games in Aomori, Japan, the North's squad of 51 athletes won one silver and one bronze. The country dispatched 32 athletes to Kazakhstan this year.
North Korea has been on the slide since taking one gold, two silver and five bronze medals at the first Asian Winter Games in Japan's Sapporo.
Meanwhile, South Korea ranked second in the medal standings of the Kazakhstan Asiad as of Saturday, with 12 golds, 11 silvers and 12 bronzes.(Yonhap)