Hong Un jong

Career

She was an individual event finalist on the vault at the 2007 World Championships and the bronze medalist on the event at the 2006 Asian Games.

Hong represented North Korea at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, where she won the gold medal in the women's vault competition. This was the first Olympic medal for a North Korean woman in Olympic gymnastics.

Hong won the gold medal in vault at the 2013 Summer Universiade in Kazan (tied with Russian gymnast Ksenia Afanasyeva) and is the bronze medalist on vault at the 2013 World Championships.

The following year she won the vault final at the World Championships. She performed the two most difficult vaults in the final. In 2015 Hong again represented North Korea at the World Championships held in Glasgow. Though she retained her full difficulties and performed impressively, she failed to defend her title and won a silver medal instead. She was behind Russia's Maria Paseka by 0.033 point. At the 2016 Summer Olympics, she qualified second into vault finals behind Simone Biles. In the finals she performed a solid Cheng to start. For her second vault, she became the first female gymnast to ever attempt a triple twisting yurchenko vault; however she under rotated and sat down the vault, getting the vault devalued to an Amanar, and ultimately missed the podium.

Age controversy

Hong Un-jong is the younger sister or possibly twin sister of Hong Su-jong. Hong Su-jong had three different birth dates listed for her (1985, 1986, or 1989) at various competitions. At the 2004 Summer Olympics, she competed under the 1985 birth date, but the 1989 birth date would have meant that she was too young to compete. In November 2010 Hong Su-jong was banned from all competition out of North Korea for inconsistent age information for two years. North Korea was also banned from all international competition until October 2012 due to this incident, and North Korea could not send any gymnasts to the 2012 Summer Olympics.