“I will definitely win a gold medal at the Paralympic Games in Paris, and I will visit my grandmother’s grave with the gold medal and the beef she loved in her life.” South Korean Para taekwondo men’s 80-kilogram kanpan Joo Jeong-hoon (29-SK Eco Plant) told reporters on Friday ahead of the opening ceremony of the Korean Para Sports Federation’s national training for the 2024 Paralympic Games at Icheon Athletes Village in Gyeonggi Province .”My grandmother passed away a few months after the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games,” he said. “She told me that she called my name before she passed away. I vowed to win the gold medal I couldn’t win in Tokyo for her at the Paris Paralympics. “When he thinks of his grandmother, he starts to cry. His grandmother was the one who carried the guilt all his life .Joo became disabled at the age of two.
He had a horrific accident at his grandmother’s house in Haman-gun, Gyeongnam, when he put his right hand in a sawmill. Every time his grandmother, Kim Bun-sun, saw her son, daughter-in-law, and grandson, she cried uncontrollable tears, believing that he was a sinner. After a lifetime of tears, Ms. Kim was diagnosed with dementia in 2018. Joo Jeong-hoon became a member of the Para taekwondo national team and won a bronze medal at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games in 2021, but his grandmother didn’t recognize him. After the Games, Joo visited his grandmother in a nursing home with his bronze medal. She still didn’t recognize him. A few months later, she passed away. When Joo heard that his grandmother was in critical condition, he rushed to the nursing home, but was unable to visit her on her deathbed. Instead, he was told that she called his name .”They told me that she called my name. It was heartbreaking,” he said. “She’s in Seonsan, and I’m going to visit her before the Paris Paralympics,” he said.
He said, “After the Games, I’ll come back with the gold medal. I will also bring her her favorite beef.”Joo is the poster boy for Para taekwondo in South Korea. He first learned taekwondo in the second grade and was touted as an elite athlete, competing against able-bodied athletes. He gave up the sport in his sophomore year of high school because he was hurt by the way people looked at him, but when taekwondo became an official sport at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, he took up the sport again .He became the first South Korean athlete to win a Paralympic taekwondo medal in Tokyo, taking bronze in the men’s 75-kilogram category .Last October, he became the first South Korean to win a title at the Hangzhou 2022 Para Asian Games. “At the Tokyo Paralympic Games, I prepared for the competition alone, but now I have a lot of support from 카지노사이트킹 the Korean Paralympic Association,” Joo said, “I will definitely win this time and leave no regrets.”