North Korea won its first gold medal at the Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games, its first international event in five years, in shooting .North Korea, which had been suffering from a gold medal drought at the Games, continued its tradition as an Asian shooting powerhouse with the medal. The North Korean team won the team gold and individual silver and bronze medals in the women’s 10-meter running target event at the Fuyang Throat Sports Center in Hangzhou on Monday .It was North Korea’s first gold medal at the Asian Games. North Korea fielded an internationally experienced team of Ri Ji-ye and Paik Ok Shim (25) and the relatively young Bang Myong-hyang (22) in this event .Ri Ji-ye and Paik Ok-sim won silver in the same event at the 2018 World Shooting Championships in Changwon, South Korea. In the individual competition, the Kazakh athlete took first place, followed by Li Jie and Baek Ok-Sim .In the team event, where the scores of the three athletes are combined to determine the medal color, Li Jie, Baek Ok-shim, and Bang Myung-hyang placed second through fourth, beating second-place Kazakhstan by a small margin. The gold medal will go some way to softening the blow of the North Korean shooting, especially after the country took only two silver medals in the 10-meter running target men’s event, where four golds were up for grabs on Aug. 25-26.Park Myong Won, the North Korean flag bearer at the opening ceremony, was tearful at the awards ceremony, and the North Korean team turned down repeated offers from South Korean athletes to pose for a photo on the podium. The men’s shooters were also present at the ceremony to congratulate the North Korean athletes on their gold medal. However, the North Korean athletes, despite their gold medal, were once again passed through the mix zone without answering any questions from the press. North Korean athletes and officials have been deliberately avoiding questions from South Korean reporters during the Games, perhaps due to the deteriorating inter-Korean relations .In North Korea, shooting is a strategic sport that has been fostered by policy and was once considered a “powerhouse” sport .At the 1972 Munich Olympics, Ri Ho Joon set an Olympic and world record with a score of 599 (out of 600) in smallbore rifle prone, and three years later, at the 1975 Asian Championships in Malaysia, he won six medals, including a gold in air rifle. Seo went on to win a record seven medals at the 1982 Asian Games in New Delhi, sweeping the individual and team gold medals in free pistol and air pistol. However, after a poor showing at the Asian Championships in Indonesia the following year, Seo’s international career went downhill, until he shocked the world by winning three team gold medals at the 1998 Asian Games in Bangkok. Since then, the sport has served as a “filial” sport, at least at the Games, with Park winning two gold medals at the 2010 바카라사이트 Guangzhou Asian Games in China and one at the 2018 Jakarta-Palembang Asian Games in Indonesia.