But she didn't.

Instead, she took the daring step of leaving her parents to immigrate to the United States alone as a teenager, in search of a better education and more personal freedom. She did not have to abandon her sporting dreams, however, and in fact can still make it to the Olympics - albeit against her former countrywomen, rather than alongside them - if she performs as well as she's expected to at the U.S. Short-Track Championships this week in Marquette, Mich.

"She's ready to skate the way everyone knows she can," teammate Caroline Hallisey said.

Barely two years after moving in with a cousin in Fullerton, Calif., the 17-year-old Kim has become one of the rising stars in U.S. Speedskating. She and teammate Allison Baver are the best hopes among American women to win individual medals in Turin - Kim set an American record while finishing fourth in the 1,000 meters at a World Cup event in Italy last month - and they also figure to strengthen a relay team that failed to reach the finals at the 2002 Salt Lake Games when Hallisey crashed on the first turn.

Of course, to win anything, Kim will have to defeat some of the strong Chinese team's members as well as her friends on the powerful Korean team, some of whom Kim suspects envy her ability to leave the strict and sometimes harsh training conditions in Korea.

"They're actually jealous," she said.

Kim said she never saw coaches abuse athletes during training, as some reports have suggested, but nevertheless did not care for an overbearing environment that she described as "kind of the Korean culture." She also wanted to pursue her studies more, something she said was not possible while also skating in Korea.

Kim has been speaking English only since her arrival in the United States, so she's not quite fluent yet. But while answering questions from a horde of reporters during a recent interview session, it's clear she has come a long way from when she first stepped off the plane.

"When I came here, I had a really hard time," she said.

Not just with the language, either.

Leaving her family and friends was difficult, and she missed them terribly. She called all the time, but "couldn't tell them that I wanted to go home" because of how badly she wanted to succeed in the U.S.

She worked with a tutor rather than attend school her first year in her new country. Kim lived with her cousin, a math teacher in Fullerton who also offered several suggestions for an English version of her first name because her given name is often hard for Americans to pronounce.

She settled on "Halie."

Eventually, she caught on with U.S. Speedskating and moved into its residency program at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. She enrolled in a Christian high school and soon became friends with her new teammates - even Apolo Ohno, who inspired such loathing in Korea with his controversial victory over Korean Kim Dong-sung at the 2002 Salt Lake Games.

"They think I'm a little young sister," she said.

Kim actually has enjoyed dual citizenship since she was born, she said, on account of her parents.

Native Koreans, they lived in Los Angeles for 12 years while her father worked for AMEC, a British company that designs and manages capital assets such as power plants and research labs. He became a U.S. citizen during that time, but had to return to Seoul for work shortly before Kim was born in 1988.

Kim was documented as a U.S. citizen, however, facilitating her move to the States after growing up mostly in Seoul. Her parents now visit about twice a year, she said, and she typically returns to Korea after each short-track season in April.

And though she obviously still looks Korean and still speaks the language, she feels herself "kind of" becoming increasingly American - though she has a greater fondness for Disneyland and movies like "Aladdin" and "Beauty and the Beast" than she does for greasy, fatty food.

"I'm a Disney girl," she said.

On the ice, though, there's no fooling around. Kim has been known to skate with the men to get a hard enough workout, and she's ranked fourth overall after four World Cup events this season, although she's no higher than sixth at any one distance - 500, 1,000 or 1,500 meters.

Still, her American record and a fourth-place finish at the World Cup in Italy suggest that after missing part of last season with a shin injury, she's on the cusp of breaking through to the podium and perhaps convincing fans and friends back in Seoul that she really will be wearing stars and stripes forever.

"They're still asking about, 'Oh, so, before Olympics, are you going to move here, to Korea back?' " she said. "I'm like, 'No.' ''