Kim Haeng-jik — Korean Three-Cushion Star

Kim Haeng-jik (김행직, born 1992, South Korea) is one of the defining figures of Korea’s three-cushion golden generation — a four-time junior world champion turned senior contender, nicknamed the ‘Pool Genius’ for the speed and clarity of his table reading.

Career highlights

• Junior World Three-Cushion Champion four times — his first crown came as a teenager in Spain (2007)
• UMB World Three-Cushion Championship runner-up (2016, Bordeaux) — losing a razor-thin final to Dani Sánchez by 37-40 on his very first senior worlds appearance
• UMB World Cup winner in 2017 — taking the Porto stage (beating Vietnam’s Nguyen Quoc Nguyen 40-34 in the final) and then the Cheongju stage on home soil barely three months later
• 2017 UMB World Cup overall season winner on the back of those back-to-back titles
• Represented Korea at the 2017 World Games and remained a fixture on World Cup podiums, including Las Vegas finishes in 2022 and 2023

Playing style & technique

Kim embodies the modern Korean school: fast, fearless and technically immaculate. He famously first picked up a cue at age three in his father’s billiard room and won an adults’ national competition at fourteen — a head start that shows in how instantly he reads angles. Rather than labour over every position, he plays at tempo, trusting a calibrated internal diamond system to find the line and committing fully to the stroke. The result is a game that looks effortless precisely because the calculation has been internalised.

Newcomers can build the same habit inside the simulator: walk a shot through the Korean five-and-a-half system first, then fire it at speed once the count feels automatic — the same loop that produced Kim’s match rhythm.

Signature shots & systems

The cornerstone of the Korean game, and of Kim’s, is disciplined reverse-english control — applying spin against the natural running side so the cue ball widens or shortens its path predictably off the rails. It is the difference between hoping a ball curves back and knowing it will.

• The reverse-bricole, where reverse spin sends the cue ball into the short rail first and back across the table — a position the Korean school has turned into a percentage shot
• The ticky and the around-the-table pattern, both of which reward the clean speed-and-spin matching Kim relies on
• Long-rail solutions such as bricole long-rail, where precise tempo keeps the third-cushion arrival honest

For the underlying spin mechanics, the ball-control and spin guide breaks down exactly how reverse english changes a cue ball’s departure angle.

Rivalries & era

Kim arrived just as a deep Korean wave was cresting. He grew up in the same competitive culture that produced pioneers like Sang Lee and contemporaries such as Cho Jae-ho and Choi Sung-won, and he measured himself against the established European and Vietnamese elite — from Dani Sánchez, who edged him in the 2016 final, to the rising Vietnamese stars he met across World Cup draws. That mix of mentors, rivals and fast-improving peers sharpened a generation that pushed three-cushion to new technical heights.

Legacy

Still competing at the top, Kim represents the bridge between Korea’s founding three-cushion legends and the players chasing them today. A junior phenomenon who reached a world final on his senior debut and then conquered the World Cup circuit, he proved that the Korean method — relentless practice, system discipline and committed strokes — travels to the very top of the world game. For students, his career is a clear lesson: master the count, then play with conviction.