Completion of 1186.5km in 51 days…
Korea’s leading female mountaineer Kim Young-mi (43), the first Asian woman to step on the south pole at 90 degrees south latitude alone.
Kim Young-mi arrived at the South Pole at 8:57 pm on January 16, 2023, 50 days, 11 hours and 37 minutes after leaving the Hercules Inlet in the west of Antarctica on November 27 of last year (local time). She was the first Korean and the first Asian woman to successfully complete the South Pole by herself, without intermediate supplies such as food and fuel. So far, a total of 17 women, including Canadians, French, Germans, Icelanders, and the British, have stepped on the South Pole alone. There are no Asians. Among them, only 10 women, ahead of Kim, reached the South Pole without food or supplies.
Mr. Kim is a veteran mountaineer known in Korea. He started climbing the Himalayas in 2003 and succeeded in climbing Everest in 2008. Since then, he has become the youngest person in Korea to climb the highest peaks on seven continents. In the winter of 2017, he also ran the 723 km of frozen Lake Baikal alone. In 2014, he participated as the only Hong Il-jeom member of the Chosun Ilbo’s unification prayer project, ‘One Korea New Race Bicycle Peace Campaign’ expedition, and completed 15,000 km in 100 days.
The straight line distance from Hercules Inlet to the South Pole is 1130 km. However, Mr. Kim overcame the severe cold and blizzard with an average temperature of minus 30 degrees and pulled a sled loaded with equipment weighing more than 110 kg, skiing or walking for 11 hours a day, breaking through obstacles and crossing the distance of 1186.5 km. 메이저사이트
Kim’s challenge was a life-or-death struggle. He said, “Whiteout (a phenomenon in which gas or fog forms on the surface of the snow, making everything around it appear white) was the biggest nuisance.” said
When he lost his sense of direction, he used his experience as a veteran mountaineer to navigate by the position of the sun and shadow, and the direction of the wind. It is said that in Antarctica, the wind always blows from a fixed direction, so it was possible to find a way to go in the direction of the wind. There was also a time when one of the two solar-powered batteries could not withstand the cold and stopped. On the 7th, the day before the arrival at 88 degrees in Antarctica, the sling (the string connecting the body and the sled) that was pulling the sled fell off and had a hard time.
Due to the influence of the polar magnetic field, the compass malfunctioned and went in the wrong direction several times. During the expedition, he said on Facebook, “I was able to correct a compass error of about 10° by comparing it with the GPS,” and “I had to check the GPS every time I went 3km.”
Mr. Kim’s challenge to the South Pole began in 2011 when he remembered and missed his senior mountaineer, Captain Park Young-seok, who died while climbing Annapurna. Captain Park Young-seok is a Korean who has succeeded in an expedition to the South Pole with Captain Heo Young-ho. Both reached the South Pole in a team of 4 or more people, not on their own expedition. At the beginning of this challenge, Mr. Kim said, “The process of reaching the South Pole told by Captain Park stimulated me endlessly.” For this challenge, Mr. Kim visited Norway, the Amur River in Russia, and the Himalayas in Nepal last year for intensive field training, and pursued a more painful challenge than Captain Park.
During the expedition, they did not receive intermediate supplies or support in emergency situations, and they walked, skied, and pulled the sled using only their own power without wind power (using a kite), dog assistance (dog sled), or vehicle assistance. Radios, compasses, global positioning systems (GPS), etc. are not supported.
After standing at the South Pole, Mr. Kim said, “I will take you with ten fingers and ten toes without injury (frostbite). I have to walk about 20km today, but I was worried about frostbite, so I was worried until I went to sleep last night. I don’t know how he got here by pulling a sled over 1000 km. I stood at the South Pole today, but the journey of 50 days is like a dream overnight.”