While nearly 3,000 athletes from 95 nations are scheduled to visit South Korea for the upcoming PyeongChang Winter Olympics, this year has a personal significance for some athletes from the US.

For Chloe Kim, a 17-year-old snowboarder from Torrance, California, South Korea is where her parents are from. Many of her relatives, including her grandmother, still live in South Korea.

Kim, who became the first person under the age of 16 to win three gold medals at an X Games back in 2016, is making her Olympic debut in PyeongChang. 

Dubbed as “queen of snow,” she was also the first woman to ever land back-to-back 1080 spins at the US Snowboarding Grand Prix in the same year.

“(My relatives in Korea) have never seen me compete before,” Kim said in an interview with Fox News. “I’m excited to have them there.”

The unified Korean women’s ice hockey team, which consists of players from both of the Koreas, also has two Korean-American members.

One is Randi Griffin, a 29-year-old from North Carolina whose mother is Korean. According to US news reports, she was first approached by the Korean Ice Hockey Association back in 2014.

As the host country for the upcoming Games, South Korea gets an automatic bid for team competitions.

In spite of the automatic entry, South Korea did not have many female hockey players back in 2014, and the Korean Ice Hockey Association was looking for “North American-raised, Korean heritage athletes” to join the national team for PyeongChang, the NPR reported.

Griffin was among the North America-based athletes who were spotted.

Another is Marissa Brandt, who has been receiving heavy media attention in the US. Brandt was born in South Korea but was adopted by an American couple in Minnesota when she was only four-months-old.

Like Griffin, Brandt will also be playing for the unified Korea hockey team. According to US news reports, she was approached by South Korean goalkeeping coach who happened to live in Minnesota, where Brandt’s family resides.

What’s more exciting is that Brandt’s sister, Hannah, also plays ice hockey and she will be part of the US national team in PyeongChang. 

“I never really dreamed about going to the Olympics when I was a kid,” Marissa said in an interview with Twincities Pioneer Press. 

“It’s an amazing opportunity, though, and I’m excited to be able to enjoy this experience with (my sister). I’m also lucky it’s in my home country, because then my family can experience where I came from.”

Griffin and Brandt are currently training with 12 North Korean players, as well as South Korean athletes. Some South Koreans have been criticizing Seoul’s last minute decision to insert North Korean players as a grand gesture of sports diplomacy. 

“We want to just focus on the athletics side of things and try not to pay attention to this,” Griffin told the NPR last week when asked about the ongoing controversy on the inter-Korean team. 

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)