Photo: Choi Ga-on holds up the gold medal. Credit: Yonhap News.
The 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics is in the books, with South Korea earning three gold, four silver, and three bronze medals. Team Korea improved its showing from the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, where the country won two golds, five silvers and two bronzes.
All of South Korea’s medals came from two sports: short track speedskating and freestyle snowboarding. In short track, Korea won two golds, three silvers and two bronzes. Choi Min-jeong 최민정, who won gold in the women’s 3,000-meter relay and silver in the women’s 1,500-meter race, set the new Korean record for most career Olympic medals won, with a total of seven medals over three Olympics.
Korea won a gold, a silver and a bronze medal in snowboarding. Choi Ga-on 최가온 became the first Korean to win a gold medal in snow sports at the Winter Olympics, besting the United States’ Chloe Kim in halfpipe. The 17-year-old Choi suffered three fractures in her hand after a scary fall on her first run, and fell again on her second, but landed a 90.25 score in her third run to win the gold.
South Korea has been emerging as a snowboarding power since the 2018 PyeongChang games, where Lee Sang-ho 이상호 won the country’s first medal with a silver in men’s parallel giant slalom.
