FOCUS ON SOUTH KOREA
Netflix’s Physical: 100 AKorea’s breakout star Andre Jin Coquillard is using AKorea’s entertainment power to promote rugby in his country
ANDRE JIN Coquillard never expected to be one of the faces of Korean rugby. When you Google ‘Korean rugby’, images of the retired national rugby player-turned-coach pop up on the front page of the search options. The athlete, known as Andre Jin professionally, doesn’t mind being the unofficial face of the sport in Korea. In fact, he considers himself an ambassador. “It has always been my motto to represent rugby well,” says Andre Jin, who gained fame after competing on the last season of Netflix’s Physical: 100. “Rugby is popular worldwide but almost non-existent in Korea. I’m trying to show how good we are, not just to the people of Korea but people overseas.” This wasn’t always the case for the brawny 6ft 5in athlete, who was born in Seoul to a French-Irish American father and a Korean mother. Andre Jin fell in love with rugby at his Canadian secondary boarding school. His athletic performance was so impressive that it led him to the US U17 national team, where he was recruited by the University of California, Berkeley, to play at collegiate level. After graduating in 2014, he moved to Shanghai to work in sports marketing. But Andre Jin regretted missing the opportunity to turn pro. He continued to play rugby as a hobby and was offered the chance to play for Hong Kong in 2015. As fate would have it, the Korean national team was playing at the Hong Kong Sevens around the same time. “That was my calling,” he says. “I contacted someone I knew from the Korea Rugby Union (KRU). I said, ‘If there’s ever an opportunity, I would love to chase it’ – chase the dream, so to speak.”
Andre Jin became Korea’s first naturalised rugby player in 2017. Four years later, he played for South Korea in the delayed Tokyo Olympics.
Chronic knee issues forced him to undergo a second knee surgery shortly after the Games, causing him to retire at the end of 2021.
His playing days are over but he found new life as a coach for OK Financial Group OKman Rugby Club and as a TV sports personality.
l FINDING FAME IN REALITY
Netflix’s latest instalment of Physical: 100 –Underground was the most viewed non-English show in its premiere week of 18-24 March, logging 6.1m views and 25.3m hours viewed. The competition series charted in the top ten of more than 80 countries. Andre Jin, who finished third in the competition, took the series as a personal challenge to push himself and compete against other strong competitors. “Many players retire and
