Story by Steve Han.
Yikes! The Queen has found a King.
Star figure skater Kim Yuna, known as “Queen Yuna,” is dating ice hockey player Kim Won-jung, her agency confirmed Thursday.
South Korean tabloid website Dispatch set the Korean Internet on fire Wednesday after releasing a series of photos, one of which shows Kim, 23, taking a leisurely stroll alongside the 29-year-old hockey player in Seoul with her arm wrapped around him. Kim’s agency, All That Sports, later revealed that the two athletes are indeed dating.
“Most of what Dispatch reported is true as Kim Yuna and Kim Won-jung are in a relationship,” the agency said in a press release.
The couple first met in July 2012 while training at the Taeneung Training Center in Seoul where South Korean figure skaters, ice hockey players and short track skaters share the ice rink throughout the day prior to international competitions, including the Winter Olympic Games, according to Dispatch. They began dating in August 2013. Both of them also recently graduated from Korea University.
The photos published by Dispatch were reportedly taken on Sept. 5 last year, which was Kim’s 23rd birthday, but the reporter who broke the story decided to hold them until now to avoid being a distraction to Kim’s preparations for the Winter Olympic Games, where she controversially settled for a silver medal behind Adelina Sotnikova of host country Russia.
“We set the date for the release of the photos sometime after the Olympics out of consideration [for Kim],” said Na Ji-yeon, the Dispatch reporter who broke the news, according to YTN News. “We decided to release the photos in March after all her [competitions] were over.”
Kim Won-jung plays for the military club Daemyung Sangmu in the Asia League Ice Hockey (ALIH), which is a three-nation league with three teams from Korea, one from China and four based in Japan.
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This story was originally published in iamkoream.com.