| Date | 18 September 1988 — 17:00-21:00 | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Olympic | |
| Location | Olympic Weightlifting Gymnasium, Ol-lim-pik Gong-won, Seoul | |
| Participants | 24 from 18 countries | |
| Format | Total of best lifts in snatch and clean & jerk determined placement. Ties broken by lightest bodyweight. | |
China’s He Zhouqiang held the world record but Bulgaria’s Sevdalin Marinov had won the last three World Championships and was favored. He opened with a world record snatch of 120.0 kg and won the gold medal, as he also had the best clean & jerk, giving him a world record total of 270.0 kg. Korea’s Jeon Byeong-Gwan won the silver as He Zhouqiang won the bronze only on bodyweight over his teammate Zhang Shoulie.
| Pos | Competitor(s) | NOC | K | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sevdalin Marinov |  BUL | 270.0 | Gold | ||
| 2 | Jeon Byeong-Gwan |  KOR | 260.0 | Silver | ||
| 3 | He Zhuoqiang |  CHN | 257.5 | Bronze | ||
| 4 | Zhang Shoulie |  CHN | 257.5 | |||
| 5 | Jacek Gutowski |  POL | 247.5 | |||
| 6 | Traian Cihărean |  ROU | 240.0 | |||
| 7 | Béla Oláh |  HUN | 237.5 | |||
| 8 | Kazushito Manabe |  JPN | 230.0 | |||
| 9 | Hwang In-Dong |  KOR | 230.0 | |||
| 10 | Humberto Fuentes |  VEN | 227.5 | |||
| 11 | Gurunathan Muthuswamy |  IND | 227.5 | |||
| 12 | José Luis Martínez |  ESP | 225.0 | |||
| 13 | José Andrés Ibáñez |  ESP | 222.5 | |||
| 14 | Chiang Ming-Hsiung |  TPE | 222.5 | |||
| 15 | Sodikin |  INA | 217.5 | |||
| 16 | Levent Erdoğan |  TUR | 217.5 | |||
| 17 | Yoshinori Namiki |  JPN | 215.0 | |||
| 18 | Greg Hayman |  AUS | 207.5 | |||
| 19 | Raghavan Chanderasekaran |  IND | 207.5 | |||
| 20 | Gregorio Colonia |  PHI | 205.0 | |||
| 21 | Khodor Al-Aywan |  LBN | 185.0 | |||
| 22 | Bharat Sawad |  NEP | 180.0 | |||
| Chung Yung-Chi |  TPE | 97.5 | ||||
| Ramadan Mahmoud |  EGY | 100.0 |