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By Shin Na-yun
"I want to receive the Nobel Prize in mathematics, the Fields Medal"
This is a remark by Kim Dong-ryul, 15, a leading student who helped Korea win the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) for the first time. Kim was the youngest on the Korean team.
He got 40 out of a possible 42 points in his first competition in the 53rd Olympiad held in Mar del Plata, Argentina, July 4. In the individual event, Kim was placed second among 548 contestants from 100 countries, following a Singaporean student.
Although Kim was eliminated in the final screening for the Korean team when he was a middle school student last year, he prepared harder for this year to compete in the mathematics contest.
Kim's mother Yoo Jeong-jae, 43, played numbers games with him when he was four years old after finding he was gifted in mathematics through his kindergarten teacher. He was prominent enough to say "If seven people want to eat two plates of pizza, they had to be divided into two sevenths per person," when he was five, according to Yoo.
The Korean participants were Kim Dong-hyo, 17; Moon Han-wool, 16; Park Sung-jin, 16; Park Tae-hwan, 17; and Chang Jae-won, 16. They are all students at Seoul Science High School except for Moon who is attending Sejong Science High School. All the students earned gold medals, making Korea rank top at Olympiad.
Korea scored a total of 209 points followed by China with 195, the United States with 194 and Russia with 177. The total score in a combination of all points earned by the six students.
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