Olympic hopeful Kim Ga-eun is a badminton player for South Korea who took the women’s title at the China Masters in 2019. Ga-eun was selected to join the Korean national team in 2016, and won bronze in the singles and girl’s doubles events at the 2016 World Junior Championships in Bilbao. In 2017 she won a gold medal at the Surdiman Cup in the 2017 Gold Coast in the mixed team event. Ga-eun is now training hard as she works on her lifelong ambition to compete at the Olympic Games.

Born in Ulsan, South Korea, Ga-eun began playing badminton when she was just 8 years old. She made her international debut in 2014 at the Asian Junior Championships picking up a silver medal in the mixed team event. Two years later she won bronze in the girls’ singles category at the Asian Junior Championships in Bangkok, and also added two bronze World Junior Championship medals to her collection at Bilbao in 2016.

In 2017 Ga-eun clinched a gold medal at the Surdiman Cup in the mixed team event, and since then has continued to steadily rise to prominence breaking into the Top 20 ranked players in the world. In 2019 she won the China Masters and was set to defend her title in 2020 when the event was postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak, but while competitions are on hold she continues to chase her Olympic dream through hard work and intense training.