Kim Jae-Bum

Who is Kim Jae-Bum?

Kim Jae-Bum is a male South Korean judoka.

Kim won a gold medal in the -73 kg class at the 2004 World Junior Judo Championships in Budapest, Hungary.

At the 2005 Asian Judo Championships in Tashkent, he won a gold medal in the -73 kg class.

Kim was considered one of the Big Three Judokas of the -73 kg class in South Korea, along with Lee Won-Hee and Wang Ki-Chun. But in 2007, he moved up in weight to avoid the fierce competition, and won a gold medal in the -81 kg category at the 2008 Asian Judo Championships in Jeju.

Kim competed in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, and won the silver medal in the -81 kg class. In the preliminary rounds, he defeated 2006 European champion Serguei Shundikov of Belarus by points and 2007 European champion Robert Krawczyk of Poland by ippon. Kim edged out 2008 European champion João Neto of Portugal by points in the quarterfinals. In the semifinal, Kim beat 2005 World Champion Guillaume Elmont of the Netherlands. He lost to 2005 European champion Ole Bischof of Germany in the final, though Kim had defeated all of the European champions from 2006 to 2008 in the previous rounds.

Kim won his first major gold medal at the 2010 World Judo Championships held in Tokyo, Japan. In the gold medal match, he defeated two-time Olympic medalist Leandro Guilheiro of Brazil by scoring a waza-ari with ouchi-gari in extra time.