Kang Min-ho South Korean Baseball Player From Jeju

Early life

Kang Min-ho was born on 18 August 1985 on Jeju Island, South Korea. He attended Pohang Jecheol Middle School and then Pohang Jecheol Technical High School in Pohang. He plays as a catcher and stands 185 centimetres tall.

In 2003, while still at school, he was chosen for the South Korean national junior team for the 5th Asian Junior Baseball Championship, held in Bangkok, Thailand. He was the starting catcher in that tournament, and South Korea won the title, its second at the event.

Career

After finishing high school, Kang turned professional in 2004. The Lotte Giants selected him in the second round of the 2004 Korea Baseball Organization draft, as the third pick of that round and seventeenth overall. In the 2006 season he became the club's regular starting catcher and played in all 126 regular-season games, which made him the youngest starting catcher in KBO history to appear in every game of a season.

His batting improved sharply in 2008. He finished that year with a .292 average, 19 home runs and 82 runs batted in, ranking nineteenth in the league in average, fifth in home runs and sixth in runs batted in. The Giants reached the post-season that year for the first time since 2000, and Kang won his first Golden Glove Award at catcher, the first player to win the award at that position while playing for the Giants.

Kang was part of the South Korean baseball team at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. He started as the backup to the catcher Jin Kab-yong, but when Jin was injured in a game against the Netherlands, Kang took over as starter from the next game. He remained the first-choice catcher for the rest of the tournament, and South Korea won the gold medal.

After the 2017 season he left Lotte and signed with the Samsung Lions. The contract ran for four years and was valued at eight billion won, roughly 7.3 million US dollars.

Recognition

Kang has won the KBO Golden Glove Award at catcher in 2008, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2024, which makes seven selections in total. His Olympic gold medal from 2008 is the other major honour on his record.