My visit to South Korea
Back in July, I went to visit South Korea. It was a personal trip, and my main purpose was to meet up with my childhood friends. However, during my visit, DongHyun Kim (head coach of the national team) invited me to come watch a local competition held in Yanggu, Gangwon. It's a small town located 2 hours away from Seoul, and hosts multiple weightlifting competitions throughout the year. You'll notice that a lot of South Korean lifters often post competition footage from there on social media. I got to meet some cool people and athletes while I was there. DongHyun coach was nice enough to get me a bus ticket to get to Yanggu, and even bought me breakfast and lunch! 😁😁😁
Korean Professional Weightlifting Association President's Cup
The name of this competition was "Korean Professional Weightlifting Association President's Cup" (I tried my best to translate it into something that makes sense in English...). It's a pretty important competition for professional Korean weightlifters, and majority of them compete at this event. Some athletes who competed at the Japan-China-Korea friendship tournament (Tokyo2020 Test Event) didn't participate at this competition, since competing twice within one month could get pretty rough.
The Day of Shooting
Unfortunately I was able to film only for a day, since my main purpose of the trip wasn't to shoot weightlifting content. I got to film the following sessions: 55kg, 61kg, 67kg (male) and 45kg, 49kg (female). I was hoping I could shoot SangYeon Lee (more well known on instagram as lee sang) and MyeongMok Han (another 67kg lifter, also holds the Korean record for snatch), but unfortunately they're competing as 73kg the day after. Since they didn't want to go through a weight cut before World Championships, they were competing as 73kg lifters. However, overall it was a great experience to go film the competition. I posted the lifter who won the 67kg category this day on Instagram.
Lee Hyeong Seoup 170kg Clean and Jerk https://www.instagram.com/p/B0S6-ulg_R3/?utm_source=ig_web_options_share_sheet