Kim Gwang-Suk - Age Falsification Scandal

Age Falsification Scandal

While the gymnastics community praised Kim's performances, they also questioned her age. Kim was tiny even by gymnastics standards, and many people did not believe she was actually eligible for senior competition. At the 1991 Worlds, television commentators made several remarks about Kim's supposed age of 15. When Kim appeared at the Olympics the following year with missing front teeth, standing 4'4" and claiming to be 17 years old, the skepticism grew. Several officials and coaches publicly voiced their doubts. Béla Károlyi, during the team portion of the competition, commented "Her milk teeth are falling out, which is a good indication she's not even 11." Even NBC mentioned the controversy in their television broadcasts to American audiences.

Kim's coaches claimed that she had lost her teeth in a training mishap several years before the Olympics. This story was corroborated by photographs from past events, witnesses and video footage of Kim without teeth at the 1991 Worlds. However, there was no way to explain away the numerous inconsistencies with Kim's age.

It was eventually revealed that North Korean officials had falsified Kim's birth year at least three times, supplying different information at different competitions. The forgeries had been inconsistent at best: Kim's age was given as 15 for three consecutive years, but at the Barcelona Olympics in July 1992, her age jumped to 17.

The FIG punished the North Korean gymnastics federation by barring their women's team from the 1993 World Championships. Kim, however, was permitted to keep the medals she had won in international events, including her 1991 World Championships gold. The same year, her country's government honored her by including her in a series of postage stamps commemorating North Korean world champion athletes.

Kim's real age has never been conclusively determined, and is left blank in her FIG profile. Birth years given by the North Korean Federation ranged from 1974 to 1976, and late 1990s reports by the Korean News Service claimed that she was 14 years old in both 1989 and 1991. Some people believe Kim was born in 1976; the more accepted consensus is that her birth year was actually 1978 or even 1979. The rationale behind this estimate is that the Federation was still supplying inconsistent birth dates for Kim in 1991 and 1992. If she had been born in 1976 or 1977, this would not have been necessary (to be age-eligible to participate in the 1991 Worlds and 1992 Olympics, gymnasts had to be born on or before December 31, 1977).

Little is known about Kim apart from her competitive history and her current whereabouts are unknown. In April 2008 she briefly appeared in public in Pyongyang as a torchbearer during the North Korean portion of the Olympic torch relay.