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North Korean Lifts Absurd Amount Of Weight, Was Powered By The Ghost Of “The Great Kim Jong-Il”

Kim Jong-Il, the awful, late dictator and the guy who scored 11 hole-in-ones during his first-ever round of golf, is still facilitating record-breaking athletic achievements. Posthumously.

North Korean weightlifter Om Yun Chol, who stands just under 5-feet tall and weighs 123 pounds, cleaned and jerked three-times his bodyweight on Sunday, setting an Olympic record of 168kg (370.4 lb.) in the process.

But don’t give him the credit: it was all due to the ghost of the Dear Leader.

“How can any man possibly lift 168kg? I believe the great Kim Jong Il looked over me,” Om was quoted as saying by the Olympic News Service.

What modesty. What a TRUE OLYMPIAN.

Chol’s gold medal came in a shocking upset. In weightlifting, if there are too many competitors, the lifters are split up into “A” and “B” groups, based on expected totals. Chol was a heavy underdog, so he was in the “B” group.

Om’s record lift was also surprising because he was ranked just 11th in the world in 2011 and the best clean and jerk he registered last year was 156 kilograms at junior worlds.

What could possibly explain the uptick in performance? Obviously, the ghost of Kim Jong-Il.

But Chol wasn’t done with the legendary quotes. When he decided to give the record-breaking weight a shot, he had intimidation on his mind.

“I wanted to lift a big weight and make the other athletes nervous,” Om said.

Clearly, it worked. But more likely, it was Kim Jong-Il’s ghost that was haunting the other competitors, sapping them of the requisite strength to beat his chosen winner.

And finally, Chol thanked the Supreme Leader for his essential contributions to the performance.

“I am very happy and give thanks to our Great Leader for giving me the strength to lift this weight,” Om said. “I believe Kim Jong Il gave me the record and all my achievements. It is all because of him.”

Have we been wrong about Kim Jong-Il this whole time? Is he just misunderstood? Is he in fact the world’s greatest athlete and democratic leader, ever? (Also: greatest ghost ever?) Maybe we should shut down SportsGrid, because obviously, this whole freedom of speech thing is overrated. Maybe if we all stopped being so damn free, WE would be the ones lifting three-times our bodyweight?

Oh wait, Kim Jong-Il did these horrible things. I think we’ve got it right: SportsGrid and Free America should still remain.

And in all seriousness, it’s not surprising that a North Korean athlete has things like this to say. And it’s quite sad: he’s got to say them, or risk being tossed into a hard labor camp for God-knows-how-long. But, it makes for possibly the most hilariously misguided quotes of all time. (Besides the time that Wilt Chamberlain confidently claimed he had slept with over 20,000 women. That’s a feat only the Great Leader himself could achieve.)

[NBC Olympics]

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