Do we like them?

Do we like Yuna Kim?

Our score: 8 out of 10. A clean harm record and a long run of donations and decent conduct, held back from the top by how little she says on wider issues.

Yuna Kim started skating at seven and became the face of Korean sport. In 2009 she was the first woman to break 200 points, and in 2010 she won Olympic gold in Vancouver with a world-record score. She also became the first woman to complete a figure skating grand slam, and she won Korea's first Olympic figure skating medal.

Her big stoush came in Sochi in 2014, when she took silver behind Russia's Adelina Sotnikova in a result that set off howls of protest. Kim called the controversy “absurd” but said she was happy it was all over, and she never wallowed. She said she had “never gone over the result and thought what might have been”. That's a pretty classy way to cop a robbery.

On the harm check, nothing nasty turned up. We found no remarks about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the climate, and no slide into conspiracy theories or grievance. Her most notable public stand was in 2022, when she posted that athletes who break doping rules cannot compete, and that the principle must be upheld without exception. Here's the honest gap: she isn't a person who talks about causes much, so the record is quiet.

Her good deeds are mostly on the donation side. In 2013 she gave US$100,000 through UNICEF Korea to help children hit by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, for food, hygiene supplies and education. UNICEF Korea said she usually volunteers with them at year's end with orphans and sick children. Other reported donations turned up in searches, but we only confirmed this one.

After retiring she stayed in the Olympic family. She was named an honorary ambassador for the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, having been on the bid team, and she was the final torch bearer at the opening ceremony. That is service to her country's sport rather than a payday.

Nothing new on her lately. The latest news is lifestyle stuff: in August 2026 she posted photos from a Marie Claire shoot showing a short haircut. No court cases, no allegations and no scandals turned up in the reporting we read.