Fans celebrate curlers' Olympic campaign on social media
This captured image from YouTube shows two men mimicking the South Korean women’s curling team at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
By Yi Whan-woo
The South Korean women’s curling team has become an overnight sensation online, after defeating powerhouses and reaching the Olympic semifinals.
Fans are celebrating the team’s performances by posting memes on social media, including parody videos, a collage of skip Kim Eun-jung’s emotionless facial expressions throughout plays and the relationship among the four team members.
Videos of families and friends mimicking play with floor mops, robot vacuum cleaners, even a child on a toy car have gone viral.
The collage of Kim Eun-jung’s facial expressions has become popular as she remains calm and shows leadership irrespective of the situation.
Edited footage of her yelling at Kim Yeong-mi, who sweeps a broom according to the skip’s instructions, is among well-known memes.
The skip has called on Kim Yeong-mi far more than the two other team members -- Kim Kyeong-ae and Kim Seon-yeong -- so that the fans jokingly say they think of Kim Yeong-mi as a term used in curling.
Claiming they have a girl crush on Kim Eun-jung, some fans say they wish the charismatic athlete was their elder sister or their name was Yeong-mi so that people will search for them.
Besides their performances, several other things have caught the fans attention.
Having the same last name, they were dubbed “Team Kim.”
They are also from the same hometown of Uiseong, in North Gyoengsang Province, which is famous for garlic, leading to the moniker, “garlic girls.”
They are linked to Kim Yeong-mi one way or another. She is a high school friend of Kim Eun-jung, and also the elder sister of Kim Kyeong-ae, who is friends with Kim Seon-yeong.
The team advanced to the semis with an 8-1 record, including a seven match winning streak.
It finished eighth in its 2014 Olympic debut in Sochi.
Curling was introduced to South Korea in 1995, and the North Gyeongsang provincial government has been a pioneer in promoting the sport since then. It built an international-standard curling stadium in Uiseong in 2006, launched a men’s team in 2007 and the women’s in 2010, and the mixed doubles in 2016.
The team will face off today against Japan, which it lost 5-7 to previously, its only defeat in the preliminary round last week.