How the South Korean Women’s Curling Team Became the K-Pop Stars of the Olympics

In 1997, a physical education teacher from a small town in rural South Korea boarded a plane to North Bay, Ontario with a two-week supply of Korean instant noodles to learn more about a sport he had recently fallen in love with: curling.

That improbable journey planted the seeds for the South Korean women’s curling team’s surprising rise from anonymity to dominance at their hometown Winter Olympics more than two decades later.

The…