Nothing is impossible

Korea.net has launched a new collaborative project with its honorary reporters around the world. Each honorary reporter will write a story on the same topic, but from each of their own home cities. The stories will then be shared with our community of Korea.net readers.

For the first subject in the series, Korea.net asked our honorary reporters to send in a touching story from their home communities. Here's our eighth story on this subject, from Egypt.

If you have two arms and two legs, and if your brain works normally, then you're lucky! Officially, you're not one the disabled. However, if you have all these abilities and you didn't accomplish any progress in life -- believe me -- you need to seriously reconsider yourself.

While there's a great story behind every athlete, Ibrahim Hamato's journey as a table tennis player has been phenomenal.

Ibrahim Hamato was born in 1973. He's an Egyptian para table tennis champion, winning several honors over the years, and was a silver medalist at the 2013 African Para Table Tennis Championships.

Egyptian table tennis fanatic Ibrahim Hamato lost both arms in an accident when he was 10-years-old. Instead of giving up his favorite sport, he decided to carry on playing by improvising with his mouth.

"I hope this shows people that nothing is impossible as long as you work hard," he said to BBC Sports.

He was guest of honor at the 2014 World Team Table Tennis Championships in Tokyo, where he looked impressive in rallies against some of the world's best players, including world No. 2 Ma Long and former champion Wang Hao.

His miracle led the Japanese government to choose him as a representative for the "sports of tomorrow" organization that qualifies for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games and he was invited to play an exhibition match with the Japanese player Miu Hirano last March.

Worth noting is that Hamato played two matches in the last Paralympics in Rio and lost them to British athlete David Wetherill and to Germany player Thomas Rau.

Hamato may have not won either match he played in the men's singles class six event in Rio, but he says he earned his spot there. Among dozens of impressive feats from athletes with impairments at the Paralympics, his skills stand out.

"I've gone from being something only for show to somebody playing to win. It's not just for people to see me and go, 'Oh, that's good, that's nice.' I've won silver medals at the Egyptian Open and at the African championships. If someone makes it to the Paralympics, they should still keep working hard to make the next Paralympics and to be a champion, and not to go backwards," he said.

He wants to be a strong example to other people, especially youngsters, who might have to deal with similar impairments. "That's my goal. Back in Egypt, there are a couple of small boys like me that I'm teaching to play my way."