4 Olympic athletes who love K-pop: BTS, Blackpink and Mamamoo are all on these Korean sports stars’ pre-competition playlists
- Shin Yu-bin, South Korea’s youngest Olympic table tennis player at age 17, says she listens to BTS songs like Dynamite to get her pumped up
- Archer An San and Mamamoo’s Solar had a heartfelt exchange on Instagram, while record-breaking swimmer Hwang Sun-woo is into Itzy’s Yeji
This summer, Olympic athletes have not only grabbed the attention of sports fans but also that of K-pop fans, as they share a sense of unity around their love for the music genre.
Shin Yu-bin, the youngest member of the women’s table tennis team, who earned first place in the team competition, has revealed that she is a huge fan of BTS.
She carries photos of BTS members in her backpack and listens to BTS’s songs, such as Dynamite and DNA, when she warms up before her matches. On June 15, she shared a photo of herself holding an autographed album by BTS on her Instagram account with the comment, “I’m a successful fan”.
In previous interviews, the teenage athlete picked members V and Jin as her favourites, saying, “I have a crush on them. They’re so handsome”.
In a screenshot posted on the fan community platform Weverse, which shows Shin saying that she uses BTS’s music to get pumped up, V left a comment saying, “Fighting”, in Korean with a thumbs-up emoji.
Shin was introduced as a “table tennis prodigy” on several TV shows, including SBS’s Star King in 2009 and MBC’s Infinite Challenge in 2014.
Archer An San left a heartfelt message on Saturday, July 24, thanking Mamamoo’s Solar for supporting her.
