sports

Last March, Pang Chol Mi, a boxer of the Kumgangsan Sports Team of the DPRK, bagged a gold medal in the 52kg-category event of the 2025 IBA World Women's Boxing Championships.

Upon hearing the news, Kang Ki Ryong, mother of Pang Chol Mi, smilingly recalled the time when the girl was born.

She said that her husband regretted when the second daughter was born.

Because he had wanted to bring a son up as a good soldier if he had sired a boy.

So he named the daughter Chol Mi, wishing she would become a beautiful daughter as strong as iron.

Chol Mi liked sports from her childhood. As a child she dreamed of becoming an athlete demonstrating the honour of the country with a gold medal like woman judoist Kye Sun Hui who flew the flag of the country over the sky of the US.

But she looked frail to her parents as baby girls do to all parents.

Later, to the parents’ surprise, she was selected as a boxer of the then Jongju City Juvenile Sports School.

They did not want the girl to do boxing among many sports events.

In spite of her parents’ dissuasion and opposition, she learned boxing earnestly.

It was one day soon after she started to learn boxing.

“Today I played a match for the first time, but I failed to defend myself well and lost it. But I will surely win next time,” she said to her mother who was at a loss for words, stroking her daughter’s bruised and swollen face.

After that, Chol Mi really proved successful in the national games of juvenile sports schools and was selected as a boxer of the Kumgangsan Sports Team.

Coach Pak Chol Jun selected her.

Under the guidance of the very strict coach, she became a boxing ace.

At that time, however, Chol Mi was merely a beginner in the team although she had succeeded in the national games of juvenile sports schools.

It was one day not long after she joined the team.

The coach called her to instruct her to do repeated training.

She was soaked in sweat, but the coach kept making increasingly exact demands on her.

She expressed her dissatisfaction by plumping down on the training ground.

Then the coach said, “I am against your thinking that it is natural for you to be behind players who are superior to you in achievement or term of playing. A match does not merely mean beating the opponent. The match has already begun. If you want to win, you must control yourself first. Challenge yourself first.”

From that day on there started the coach's laborious guidance to improve the physical and technical abilities of the girl to a high level and the hard training of the “challenger” on the training ground. Later, Chol Mi won her first gold medal of international competition at the Ulan Bator Cup International Boxing Tournament held in Mongolia in 2017.

She went on to get gold medals at the IBA World Women’s Boxing Championships in 2018, the Asian male and female boxing championships in 2019 and the 19th Asian Games.

She bagged another gold medal in the 52kg-category event at the 2025 IBA World Women's Boxing Championships and became a two-time world champion seven years after earning the first gold medal from an international competition.