Do we like Yuna Kim?
Our score: 8 out of 10. A clean record on harm and a long run of real giving, held back only because the record on LGBTQ+ issues is silent.
Yuna Kim is the skater who made South Korea fall in love with figure skating. She won Olympic gold at Vancouver in 2010, and UNICEF signed her up as a Goodwill Ambassador that same year. Her fame at home is on a Taylor-Swift-meets-national-treasure scale.
Harm check: we searched for anything she has said or done about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, vaccines or the climate, and who she works with. Nothing harmful came up, and no dodgy co-stars or studios either. To be straight with you, she also hasn't said anything on LGBTQ+ issues that we could find, so that's a gap, not a tick.
The nearest thing to a stoush was in February 2022. After reports that Kamila Valieva had tested positive, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport let her skate, Kim posted that athletes who break doping rules shouldn't compete. Her Instagram was then flooded with hostile comments, which the reporting attributes to Valieva's fans, while many Korean netizens backed her. Where you land depends on whether you see it as a principled stand on fair play or a Sochi grudge. The commenters made that second argument.
On the court side, there is nothing for her to answer for. We found no conviction, finding or regulatory outcome against her. Her side has been the one threatening action over false rumours, and those stories are best left alone.
The good stuff is the real stuff. After the Haiti earthquake she recorded a televised appeal for the country's children and became a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. In 2018 she lit the cauldron at the PyeongChang Olympics, the final torchbearer at a Games she had helped Korea win the bid for.
So: a champion who has spent years on kids' causes, with nothing nasty on file. The only reason it isn't a 10 is that we can't tell you where she stands on the things this page cares most about, because she has never really said.