Seo Min-kyu

Seo Min-kyu (born 14 October 2008) is a South Korean figure skater. He is the 2024 Junior World champion, a two time South Korean national bronze medalist (2023–24), the 2023 JGP Turkey gold medalist, the 2022 JGP Poland II bronze medalist, and the 2022 South Korean junior champion.

Seo is the first South Korean man to both medal at and win the World Junior Championships.

Personal life
Seo was born on October 14, 2008, in Daegu, South Korea.

Early years
Seo began skating in 2011 at the age of four. He then became inspired to become a competitive figure skater after watching Cha Jun-hwan compete. His mother, Kim Eun-ji, is one of his coaches.

Seo's first international competition was the 2019 Asian Open Trophy in advanced novice, where he finished in sixth place. He won the national junior gold medal at the 2022 South Korean Championships.

2022–23 season: Junior international debut, national bronze medal
Making his international junior debut on the Junior Grand Prix at the 2022 JGP Czech Republic in Ostrava, Seo finished first in the short program after a clean skate, where he scored 74.39 points. He cleanly landed most of his jumps in the free skate, only to fall at the triple Salchow-double Axel sequence and edge calls on two Lutz jumps. He finished fourth overall. In early October, he competed in his second event on the circuit, the 2022 JGP Poland II in Gdańsk. He ranked fourth in the short program and third in the free, winning the bronze medal. He was named the third of three alternates for 2022–23 Junior Grand Prix Final.

In his first senior event, Seo placed fourth in the short program at the 2023 South Korean Championships. He placed second in the free skate, 11.17 points behind Cha Jun-hwan, and won the bronze medal. Seo was named the first alternate for the 2023 World Junior Championships in Calgary.

2023–24 season
In late July, Seo competed at the 2023 South Korean ISU Junior Grand Prix Qualifiers, where he won the gold medal, thus earning two assignments on the Junior Grand Prix circuit. He placed fifth at the 2023 JGP Thailand. At his second, the 2023 JGP Turkey, he won both segments of the competition and took the gold medal. As well, he successfully landed a triple Axel for the first time in international competition, which he cited as a point of pride. With these results, Seo was named as the second alternate for the 2023–24 Junior Grand Prix Final.

He went on to compete on the senior national ranking competition, winning the silver medal. In January, he competed at the 2024 South Korean Championships, where he won his second consecutive bronze medal. With this result, Seo was selected to represent South Korea at the 2024 World Junior Championships.

Competing at the World Junior Championships in Taipei, Seo won the short program with a clean skate. He was narrowly second in the free skate after singling one of his planned triple Axels, finishing 1.54 points behind Japan's Rio Nakata, but remained first overall by 1.44 points and claimed the gold medal. This was the first Junior World medal for a South Korean man. Seo said that he viewed the result as a vindication of his belief in importance of program components in addition to the technical elements.

Competitive highlights
GP: Grand Prix; CS: Challenger Series; JGP: Junior Grand Prix

Junior results
Current personal best scores are highlighted in bold.