*This content was translated by AI.
Former national team coach Lee Chang-soo, a former member of the North Korean judo team who defected to South Korea, has died. He was 58 years old.
According to the Korean Judo Association, the deceased died of a heart attack on the 20th.
The deceased represented North Korea's judo in the 1980s. He took the lead in promoting the superiority of the North Korean system by winning a number of medals on the international stage, including a bronze medal at the 1989 World Championships. However, his fate changed after losing to a South Korean player in the final of the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing.
At the time, North Korean authorities sent the deceased to a coal mine in South Hamgyong Province for losing to a South Korean player and put him in forced labor. In an interview during his lifetime, the deceased recalled, "The hardships in the coal mine were the decisive opportunity to decide to defect to the South."
After returning to the national team, the deceased escaped from a train heading to Pyongyang after the 1991 World Championships in Barcelona, Spain. After returning to Korea through the Korean consulate in Berlin, he later served as the coach of the Korean national team and took the leadership path.
The personal history of the deceased also received great attention from the judo world. Jin Young-jin, a former member of Taiwan's judo national team who first met at an international competition, reunited and married after defecting, and was called a "cross-border judo couple." All three of his sons were judokas.
The mortuary is room 3 of the funeral hall of Wonkwang University Sanbon Hospital in Gunpo-si, Gyeonggi-do. The coffin is at 8 a.m. on the 23rd, and the burial site is Hambaeksan Memorial Park in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi-do.
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*This content was translated by AI.
