His wife, Paris 2024 Olympic silver medalist Kim Ye-ji, met him at Incheon International Airport and, on hearing the medals had been left behind, said, “Shouldn’t he be punished a little?” South Korean news agency News1 reported.
“I’m sorry I did well and then couldn’t finish it off properly,” Lee replied with an awkward smile, before handing her Japanese sake he had brought back as a gift.
The medals are being kept safely at the hotel. Financial Newsciting the Korea Shooting Federation, reported that they will be returned to him soon.
Lee, 27, won both golds on Oct. 1 at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games. He teamed up with Yoon Seo-yeong and Song Jong-ho to take the men’s 25-meter rapid fire pistol team title with 1,749 points, nine ahead of China.
In the individual final later that day, he and China’s Su Lianbofan finished level on 32 points. Both hit four of five targets in the first shoot-off before Lee hit all five in the second to Su’s two.
It was South Korea’s first sweep of the individual and team rapid fire pistol titles in 12 years, according to Yonhapand took the country’s shooting tally at the Games to three golds, five silvers and four bronzes.
Door passcode joke
“My wife joked that she would change the passcode to our home if I didn’t win gold. I would have been upset if she had really locked me out,” Lee said in post-match interviews with the press.
“When I stood on the firing line for the shoot-off, I thought of my wife and child,” he said, adding that he wanted to hurry home and hang a medal around the neck of his 16-month-old.
Kim, 34, called the final as a commentator for broadcaster TV Chosun. “I really thought I was going to die,” she said once the gold was confirmed, adding that she had meant to change the passcode if he had not come first, Edaily reported.
The couple married in 2025. Kim has been on a break from competition since November 2024 and said in July 2025 that she would focus on raising her child and supporting her husband’s career, stressing that it was not a retirement, according to Newsis.
She won silver in the women’s 10-meter air pistol at the Paris Olympics, where clips of her icy composure on the firing line went viral.
Elon Musk wrote on X that she “should be cast in an action movie. No acting required!”
GQ called her the Games’ “first breakout style star.”
The couple’s next target is the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, where they aim to compete together and become “the best-shooting couple in the world, not just in Asia,” News1 quoted them as saying.