In 2013, the year he turned 9, he took up a bow in third grade at Yecheon Elementary School in North Gyeongsang, at a friend’s suggestion. In 2016, he was introduced on SBS’s Finding Genius as the No. 1 elementary-division archer and beat a Chinese archer.
In 2019, in his third year at Yecheon Middle School, he received the Korea Archery Association’s outstanding athlete award and won four titles at the national championships by category, and at the Youth World Championships in Madrid he won team and mixed gold and individual bronze. That fall he withdrew from the second national team trial with a shoulder injury. In 2020, as a first-year student at Gyeongbuk Il High School, he finished first in the second trial for the 2021 national team.
The breakthrough yearThe year he turned 17, he finished fifth in the third trial and joined the senior national team for the first time. In April, at the evaluation events, he became the youngest Korean men’s archer to make an Olympic team. In July in Tokyo, he finished first in the ranking round, then won mixed team gold with An San and men’s team gold with Oh Jin-hyek and Kim Woo-jin for two golds at the Games. He added the World Championships team title in Yankton and four titles at the National Sports Festival that year.
In 2022, he won back-to-back World Cup team titles in Gwangju and Paris, took individual silver in Paris and joined the Yecheon County Office team at the end of the year. In 2023, he won men’s team gold at the World Championships in Berlin, the Hangzhou Asian Games and the Asian Championships in Bangkok.
In 2024, he won his third Olympic gold in the Paris Olympics men’s team event and lost in the individual quarterfinal.
In 2025, at the World Championships in Gwangju, he won a third straight team title and individual bronze, his first individual medal at a senior major. In 2026, he finished first in the third national team trial and the final evaluation events and is set to compete at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games.
Kim Je-deok (born Apr 12, 2004) was first chosen for the senior national team on Mar 27, 2021, the year he turned 17, and became known the same year, on Jul 24, 2021, when he won gold in the Tokyo Olympics mixed team event. Two days later he won the men’s team gold for two golds at the Games, and in 2024, the year he turned 20, he won his third Olympic gold in the Paris Olympics men’s team event.
Ages are by calendar year (the year minus the birth year), birthdays aside.