Mother’s Pride

In general, mothers regard it as their happiness to bring up their daughters well.

There is a woman who put her two daughters as weightlifters, which others hesitate to do. She is Ri Yong Hui, mother of Rim Jong Sim and Rim Un Sim who are renowned weightlifters at the Kigwancha Sports Club.

Her eldest daughter Jong Sim, who was extraordinarily interested in sports, volunteered to enroll herself at a sports club at the age of 9, saying she wanted to become a weightlifter. The second daughter Un Sim, who was interested in learning music, also made her way to a sports group to become a weightlifter like her elder sister.

Since then, their mother has never calmed her mind at the thought of her two daughters. She worried about them if they were too exhausted during training or if they would win world championship. Whenever they came back home on rare occasions, she would tell them: Don’t think that it is not merely a shaft what you are lifting during training; you are lifting the honour of our country; and you must hoist the national flag in the international arenas.

She always felt regret for the fact that she failed to provide a harmonious family atmosphere even on holidays and days off, and made devoted efforts for her daughters’ success.

The eldest daughter trounced all her rivals and triumphed in the 69kg category of the women’s weightlifting event at the 30th Olympic Games held in 2012, and was awarded the title of Labour Hero at the age of 19. Her mother was greatly pleased as if she had nothing to envy in the world.

However, happiness was not always her own. “When Jong Sim returned home in a wheelchair as she was seriously injured during the World Weightlifting Championships held in 2015, I was really surprised. I thought if she could rise to her feet again,” her mother recollected.

She heard happy news that the eldest daughter won another gold in the women’s weightlifting event at the 31st Olympic Games held in 2016 to become a twice Olympic gold medalist and that Un Sim, the second daughter, took the first place in an international weightlifting competition.

The Rim sisters bagged gold medals respectively by winning first place in the 76kg and 64kg categories of the event in the IWF World Cup in December 2019.

Their mother, Ri Yong Hui, felt happy in having the two daughters known to the whole world and in living in the socialist state which brought them up and put them forward.