Starting the international circuit at Shanghai 2025 – stage two – Yonghee, Eun Gyu and Jongho broke the compound men’s team match world record, shooting a perfect 240 against Macau in the first round. They followed that achievement with bronze in Antalya and gold in Madrid.
“I didn’t really expect it, but I was surprised when we ended up shooting a perfect score,” Yonghee said after breaking the previous world record of 239, held by the USA. “With one end left, we managed to hit all tens.”
“Honestly, I doubted whether we could do it until then, but we just gave our best until the very last shot, thinking opportunities like this don’t come easily.”
“So, I focused together with my younger teammates, and when the good result came, I was both surprised and excited… The opposing team wasn’t one that we felt a lot of pressure from.”
While recurvers Woojin, Je Deok and Woo Seok are household names in Korea – as are most Olympic gold medallists – the compound archers are less well known.
Yonghee and Jongho became the first Korean team compound champions in 2019, boosting their own profiles and raising the discipline’s profile nationally, but that victory came thousands of miles away, in Den Bosch, Netherlands.
Winning the individual crown in front of home fans would carry a very different weight.
With a career that includes numerous World Cup triumphs and continental titles, a homecoming in Gwangju would likely be the highlight of Yonghee’s career.
