Is K-Pop group tripleS member Kim Na Kyoung an Olympic badminton player who won the gold medal in the Paris 2024 Olympics? No, that's not true: There is no evidence on the official Olympics website to suggest that tripleS member Kim Na Kyoung competed in the Olympics as a badminton player, as she is not part of the national team.
The claim appeared in a TikTok video (archived here) published on TikTok on July 28, 2024. The video had received over six million views and over 900,000 likes on TikTok at the time of writing. Several other TikTok videos (archived here and here and here) claimed that tripleS member Kim Na Kyoung won the gold medal at the Paris 2024 Olympics. The caption of the video, in English, read:
This girl who plays badminton in the Olympics representing South Korea is so fine.
#nakyoung #kimnakyoung #olympics #kpop #triples #nakyoungtriples
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Aug 2 13:42:13 2024 UTC)
According to the official Olympics website (archived here), the South Korean badminton team consisted of four men and eight women at the Paris 2024 Games. The eight female players were An Se Young, Kim Ga Eun, Lee So Hee, Baek Ha Na, Kim So Young, Gong Hee Yong, Chae Yu Jeong, and Jeong Na Eun. An Se Young did win the gold medal in the women's badminton singles on August 5, 2024, beating He Bingjiao, from China (archived here). The Olympics website (archived here) also stated the South Korean badminton team won a silver medal in mixed doubles (Kim Won Ho and Jeong Na Eun) against the Chinese team (Zheng Si Wei and Huang Ya Qiong).
The Olympic uniform worn by tripleS member Kim Na Kyoung in the viral TikTok video was the official uniform (archived here) the Korean national team wore in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (archived here). The official uniform was to be worn at the opening and closing ceremonies at the Tokyo Olympics by the South Korean national team. Another tripleS member, Yoon Seo Yeon, was seen wearing the same uniform at a fan sign meeting event (archived here) on July 21, 2024.
This is what Yoon was seen wearing on YouTube (archived here):
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Fri Aug 2 14:27:44 2024 UTC)
Although tripleS members do not have individual social media accounts, the official tripleS account (archived here) on X (formerly known as Twitter) also did not make any announcements concerning their fellow members, Kim Na Kyoung or Yoon Seo Yeon, competing in the 2024 Paris Olympics as badminton players.
