hankyoreh

aspiring table tennis player

By Lee Kyung-mi, staff reporter in Ulsan

Girls with short-cropped hair were practicing hard on the afternoon of June 4 at the Hwaam Middle School table tennis gymnasium in Ulsan, an industrial city on the southeast coast. Kim Jin-hye, a slimly built 14-year-old, was focused intently on her serve and drive.

An ethnic Korean native of Shenyang, China, Jin-hye arrived in South Korea in Sept. 2008 with her mother, who had married a South Korean man. During her time in Chinese primary school, she had learned table tennis at after-school classes.

The school she transferred to, Ilsan Elementary School in Ulsan, which turned out to be famous for table tennis. After getting a glimpse of her prowess, the coach told her mother, “We’re going to make her into one of the top five in the country.”

In June of 2009, the fifth grader made her debut with a third-place finish in the girls’ elementary team event at the National Junior Sports Festival. Her team went on to claim first place honors at the East Asian Table Tennis Games that August. As a sixth grader, she won the singles event for her age group at the National Men’s and Women’s All-Class Table Tennis Championship. During those two years, she racked up first to third place finishes at ten different events in South Korea and overseas.

Getting settled wasn’t as simple. Her mother Kim Myeong-seok, 41, had been raising Jin-hye by herself and working at a bank in China when she met and married a South Korean businessman, her second marriage. Jin-hye didn’t want to leave her friends, so Myeong-seok left Jin-hye with her grandmother. Things seemed to be looking up after the remarriage, but came crashing down after the husband’s business failed. Myeong-seok worked days at a restaurant and nights teaching Chinese at an academy.

Back in China, the grandmother’s health took a turn for the worse. Myeong-seok wanted to bring Jin-hye to South Korea, but the government demanded proof that she had sufficient assets. It was only after Myeong-seok took out a loan and got a small apartment that she was able to have her daughter with her again.

Myeong-seok and her husband fought frequently over Jin-hye’s future. The marriage ended up falling apart. Myeong-seok is now once again raising Jin-hye on her own. Last year, she worked as an interpreter and counselor for marriage immigrants at the Multicultural Family Center in Ulsan’s Hwajeong neighborhood. In March, she took a contract position at a bank providing counseling for Chinese customers. She makes around one million won (about US$850) a month, which just allows her to repay her loans and get by.

Myeong-seok is troubled by her daughter’s frail condition, the result of a difficult life. She blames herself for being in ill health while carrying Jin-hye.

“The coach keeps saying she needs to drink ginseng tonic like it was water if she wants to be an athlete. I haven’t been able to provide that for her at all,” she said. “The refrigerator at the table tennis club is filled with Chinese medicine and ginseng from the other players’ mothers.”

Jin-hye, for her part, says she’s grateful her mother does everything she needs. “It’s awkward when she comes out to the events,” she said. “It’s better if she doesn’t.” While other mothers follow their children to the different competitions tending to their needs, Myeong-seok is too busy working.

The polite and poised Jin-hye has been in a bit of a slump since arriving in middle school. She feels frustrated about her performance, which has dropped as she’s competed with older and more solidly built girls. She injured a knee tendon by practicing too hard in an effort to regain her form from elementary school, when she ranked first nationally. She also suffered a hip joint effusion.

Coach Im Yeong-sik, 34, said, “Jin-hye has solid results, focus and persistence, and an outstanding ability to learn new technique. Actually, she’s so ambitious that she tends to tire quickly. What I want to do is guide her to look far ahead and steadily hone her skills.”

Jin-hye’s dream is Olympic gold as a member of the national squad.

“And that’s not all,” she said. “I want to be the person thought of first and remembered longest. I want people to say ‘Kim Jin-hye’ when they think of table tennis.”

** The Hankyoreh is working with ChildFund on a campaign to discover promising talents from difficult backgrounds. We would like to ask for our readers’ support for children like Jin-hye who have held on to their dreams despite their financial situation. If you would like to help one of them, you can send a wire transfer to the ChildFund support account at Industrial Bank of Korea (No. 048-045945-01-026). ChildFund is a children’s welfare organization established in 1948. It currently has 180,000 supporters working to help children in South Korea and abroad build their dreams in a safe environment. For questions about regular contributions and other information, call (82) 1588-1940 or visit the web site at www.childfund.or.kr (Korean only).

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