








An active participant in many international sports competitions, Korea participated in the London Olympics in 1948 for the first time under its own national flag.
In 1936, a Korean marathoner, Sohn Kee-jeong, won a gold medal in the Berlin Olympics, but he competed as a member of the Japanese team because Korea was under Japanese colonial rule at the time.
Korea's athletes have continued to improve their performances in Olympic Games. In the 1976 Montreal Games, Korea ranked 19th among more than 100 participating nations. In Los Angeles in 1984, Koreans captured 10th place out of 140 nations and achieved fourth out of 160 nations in the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.
Korea placed seventh in the final medal standings in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. It was a memorable event for Koreans especially with Hwang Young-jo's gold medal in the marathon, enabling him to become the nation's first marathoner to win this Olympic event under the Korean national flag.
In the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Korea ranked seventh out of 172 countries with twelve golds, five silvers and twelve bronzes. Korea ranked 10th in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics with seven gold, 15 silver and five bronze medals, and 12th in the Sydney Olympics four years later with eight golds, nine silvers and eleven bronzes. In the 2004 Athens Olympics, Korea won nine gold, twelve silver and nine bronze medals, placing ninth.
No. of Total Summer Olympics Gold Medals by Category (1936-2008)
Source: International Olympic Committee