Choi Kwang Hyouk, the first-ever North Korean defector-turned-para athlete, trains at the Gangneung Hockey Centre in Gangneung on March 8.
By Yoon Sojung
Photos = Yonhap News
All the athletes from 49 countries who will compete in the PyeongChang 2018 Paralympic Winter Games are already heroes, as they have overcome obstacles to take part in these Games.
For some of them, the 2018 Winter Paralympics will hold even greater significance. Choi Kwang Hyouk, a Korean para ice hockey athlete, and cross country skier Oksana Masters of the U.S. are two such athletes. Both of them have been continuing their journey of hope in new homes after leaving their hometowns.
Choi Kwang Hyouk is the first North Korean defector who has ever become a member of the Korean national Paralympic team.
Choi left his family when he was eight and became a homeless beggar. At the age of 13, he severely injured an ankle and the lower part of his left leg when he fell from a train while selling food secretly. Due to the lack of medical infrastructure in North Korea, his leg was amputated at the ankle with no anesthesia. After losing his left foot, Choi was deeply frustrated. Miraculously, however, in 2000, he received a note from his father who had escaped from the North earlier. One year later, in 2001, he was in South Korea.
Choi began to play para ice hockey in 2014 and soon it became the center of his life. In July last year, he was selected as a member of Team Korea for the 2018 Winter Paralympics.
Choi said that, “Ice hockey feels like my mother whom I lost when I was little, and it seems like a new country to me, which offers me a new home.”
“The united Korean women’s ice hockey team touched hearts of so many people at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics,” he said.
“I dearly hoped to play in the Paralympics, as it's being held in this country. I'm so grateful that I have the time to work hard for these great Games,” he added.
Oksana Masters of the U.S. shoots while training at the Alpensia Biathlon Centre in Pyeongchang, Gangwon-do Province, on March 9. She said she will win the gold medal for her mother who helped her make her dreams come true.
Cross country skier Oksana Masters of the U.S. has also found hope in a new place.
She was originally an orphan from Chernobyl, Ukraine. Due to the Chernobyl nuclear reactor incident, she was born with severe birth defects that left her with webbed hands, six toes and deformed legs. She was put in an orphanage right after birth where she spent her early childhood. While in the orphanage, she even suffered from malnutrition and she weighed only 13 kg when she was 7 years old.
Fortunately, however, she got a new chance when she was adopted by a family in the U.S. in 1997.
In Louisville, Kentucky, Masters started a new life with her new family. However, she had her legs amputated when she was 9 and 14-years-old, as her legs couldn't hold up her body weight as she grew. At the suggestion of her mother, she learned how to row, cycle and cross country ski, all of which amputee athletes can enjoy. She loved the challenges and really got into them. At the London 2012 Summer Paralympics, she won the bronze medal in rowing. At the Sochi 2014 Winter Paralympics, she won a silver medal in the 12 km women’s sitting cross country sprint.
In PyeongChang Paralympics, Masters will compete in the cross country and the biathlon events. In interviews with USA Today and other media outlets, she said, "I want to put the medal around my mom's neck because she's why I’m here today, living my dream."
arete@korea.kr
