BEIJING-- With South Korea having lost in its last two meetings against Japan in women's curling, skip Kim Eun-jung wasn't about to let that happen for a third time, and certainly not on a stage as important as the Olympics.

South Korea rode Kim's brilliance to a convincing 10-5 victory over Japan at Beijing 2022 on Monday. South Korea improved to 3-3 for the round-robin with three games to play. With the top four teams reaching the semifinals, South Korea stayed well in the mix.

It was a must-win situation for South Korea, which had lost to the United States earlier Monday to start the crucial double header.

Against Japan, South Korea looked to be a completely different team than the one that fell to the U.S. 8-6 only hours earlier. Kim denied, however, there was any extra juice from going up against South Korea's longtime sporting rival.

"We were just trying to fix some of our problems from the morning session," Kim said. "We weren't necessarily thinking about trying to beat Japan."

Japan almost prevented South Korea from playing in the Olympics at all. In the Olympic Qualification Event in December, Japan beat South Korea twice and forced Team Kim to win a last-chance playoff game just to get into Beijing 2022.

Kim recalled she and her teammates had put too much pressure on themselves back then, because they were playing for a spot in the Olympics.

"Since we'd lost twice in a row to Japan, we wanted to really stay focused tonight," Kim said. "Obviously, it's hard not to get caught up in the Korea-Japan rivalry. But if we let that get to our head, we may start gripping our stones too hard."

Kim's counterpart, Satsuki Fujisawa, had an uncharacteristically poor game, missing on some easy draws and takeouts. Kim said she has a great deal of respect for Fujisawa.

"I don't feel any personal rivalry with her," Kim said. "She's a great player and a great leader. I think she is a really good skip."

Kim Yeong-mi, South Korea's second, said the victory could be a turning point for South Korea.

"After losing our last two games (to China and the U.S.), we could have been really down on ourselves," she said. "Hopefully, we will turn things around from here and on and play even better games the rest of the way."

Source: Yonhap News Agency