SEOUL, South Korean sports administrator Kim Jae-youl’s rise through the ranks in international sports culminated in his election as a new member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Tuesday in India.
Kim’s joining of the top global Olympic body has been more than a decade in the making. The 55-year-old is also following in the footsteps of his late father-in-law, Lee Kun-hee, the former Samsung Group chairman who was elected as an IOC member in 1996 and then became an honorary member in 2017.
Kim did his undergraduate studies at Wesleyan University, before earning a master’s degree in international politics at Johns Hopkins University and then his MBA at Stanford University.
Following his academic years, Kim worked briefly at eBay from 2000 to 2001, before jumping into corporate planning and management within Samsung Group.
Then in 2010, Kim became vice president of the Korea Skating Union (KSU) overseeing international affairs. Lee Kun-hee was then helping the South Korean resort town of PyeongChang in its bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympics, and Kim often accompanied Lee to meetings with IOC members and other international sports figures.
Kim became president of the KSU in 2011 and served in that role until 2016. On his watch, the KSU’s sponsorship revenue tripled and South Korea hosted nine international competitions.
It was one of several sports administration hats Kim wore around that time.
From 2012 to 2017, Kim served as vice president of the Korean Sport and Olympic Committee (KSOC). In 2014, Kim was the head of the South Korean delegation to the Sochi Winter Olympics.
Also in 2014, Kim joined the coordination commission of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) for the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang, Indonesia. Then in the following year, the OCA put Kim on its coordination commission for the 2017 Asian Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan.
Kim’s history with the IOC began in 2016, when he joined its coordination commission for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. That same year, Kim served as the vice president overseeing international affairs for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics organizing committee.
Also in 2016, Kim became one of the 10 members of the International Skating Union (ISU) Council, the executive body of the global skating governing body.
By rule, Kim, as an ISU executive member, had to leave his post as KSU president. And Kim began taking on more international roles in sports administration.
It led to Kim’s election as ISU president in June last year. He earned 77 out of 119 votes to beat out three candidates: Patricia St. Peter of the United States, Susanna Rahkamo of Finland and Slobodan Delic of Serbia. Kim became the first non-European head of the ISU since the organization’s foundation in 1892.
Kim pledged to increase the ISU’s revenue in order to support underdeveloped countries, to expand the use of information technology, to strengthen protection for athletes, and to forge cooperation with the IOC and other international sports organizations.
Kim’s IOC membership will clearly help him on that last point, as he becomes the third active South Korean member, along with Ryu Seung-min, the 2004 Olympic table tennis champion, and Lee Kee-heung, president of the KSOC.
Source: Yonhap News Agency