US Snowboarder Chloe Kim attracts a lot of attention

Chloe Kim is a Korean American snowboarder and her Korean name is Kim Sun.

The 16-year-old U.S. snowboarding phenom will participate in the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Despite of her young age, Kim is called as a legend. She was a snowboarder representing the U.S. at 14 and was the youngest woman to win Women’s Snowboard Superpipe gold at X Game. She is the first athlete who claimed gold for three consecutive years under the age of 16.

She was the first woman to land back-to-back 1080 spins at the 2016 U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix in Park City, Utah, last year, earning a perfect score of 100. She is No. 1 in the world ranking in the halfpipe.

Kim is now in the center of attention in the run-up to the halfpipe event of the FIS Snowboard World Cup in 2016/17, a test event for the Winter Olympics, in Bokwang Snowworld in Pyeongchang on Feb. 17 -18. Some 50 journalists attended a press conference at the Burton flagship store in the Gangnam district in Seoul on Tuesday.

“It is my first time to participate in the World Cup in Korea, my parents’ country," Kim said. "It would be very meaningful if I can get a gold in Korea.” She who likes tteokboki and K-pop like Korean teenagers said with a smile, “I listen to CL before I compete.”

The 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics will be her first Olympic Games. She was too young to compete in the 2014 Sochi Olympics as a snowboarder should be at least 15 to join the Olympics. Despite her success, she said, “I want to push myself harder.”

Shaun White and Kevin Pearce are her role models. “I think it will be important to be mature and humble as a person, not as a snowboarder," Kim said. "So I like to be athletes like them.”

Bo-Mi Im bom@donga.com