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Alexey Kim | |
---|---|
Full name | Alexey Eduardovich Kim |
Country | Russia (until 2006) South Korea (since 2006) |
Born | Tashkent, Uzbek SSR, USSR | April 5, 1986
Title | Grandmaster (2004) |
FIDE rating | 2465 (January 2025) |
Peak rating | 2488 (September 2013) |
Alexey Eduardovich Kim (born April 5, 1986) is a Soviet-born South Korean chess player. He is the only South Korean to hold the FIDE title of Grandmaster.
A third-generation ethnic Korean,[1] Kim was born on April 5, 1986, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in the Soviet Union.[2] He learned chess from his grandfather, Nikolay Vladimirovich Kim, at four years old. When he was eleven, he won the Moscow Junior Championship.[1] Kim became a FIDE master in 2000, an international master in 2001, and a grandmaster in 2004.[2] In 2006, he paid the required fee to FIDE (chess's international governing body) to switch his national federation to South Korea, in keeping with his grandfather's wishes.[1] Kim played on the South Korean team in the 2008 Chess Olympiad.[3] In 2013, he shared first place with Stanislav Novikov, Batuhan Dastan, Hagen Poetsch, Ralf Åkesson, Jonathan Hawkins and Kacper Drozdowski in the 18th Vienna Chess Open.[4]