Yunghi Kim was born in 1963 in Taeque, South Korea and began her career as a staff photographer for the Boston Globe. She joined Contact Press Images in 1995.

Kim covered the famine in Somalia in 1992 where she was held overnight as a hostage by rebels. She also photographed Rwandan refugees in 1994, political upheaval in Indonesia in 1998, Kosovar refugees in 2000, the turmoil in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2002, and the war in Iraq in 2003.

The recipient of several World Press Photo awards, Kim was named Photographer of the Year in 1997 by the NPPA. She is a regular contributor to US New & World Report, Time and Fortune. Kim is based in New York.

My philosophy always was if there is an opportunity you take it. You make the most of it, and they can't say you got there because you're a minority, or you got there because you're a woman.

When you see a photograph there's a feeling, a moment, and it evokes reaction in you. You have time to think about it. It's a universal language because it gets the message across without words. That's the power of photograph.

It's kind of surreal. You're scared, but you have to take these pictures because you have a small window of opportunity. You just click, click, click because that's all you can do. You can't kind of stop and reflect on what's going on. But then afterwards, if you look at the pictures when you're printing or editing, that's when it hits you. But when you're actually there – the camera kind of protects you, I think. It's kind of like a shield. It makes you braver sometimes.

I spent some time with one family and this one girl. I went out with her to gather wood in the woods and she sat on a tree stump and she sang a song to me, and so I have a picture of that, of her crouched down on a tree stump in the forest setting. Moments like this show me that she's a person. That's always been my theme of why I go to these places. It's not to cover the war; it's really about the people.

I interview them with my camera. My camera is the tool that I use to get to know them. I talk to them. I spend time with them. I ask a lot of questions. I get to know what their situation is and then decide what needs to be illustrated.

I always say that people that I photograph are like encyclopedias. I interview them and I learn from them. I'm a rich person for it so that's also what drives me.
I think photographers are romantics in that they have sense of wanting to witness history, be angered by an issue or an event and they want to record it. There is a greater, higher mission photographers have – especially freelancers – that they want to accomplish and so they're also attracted by that. But on the other hand, because it's so demanding physically and mentally, maybe it doesn't give you room to develop personal relationships with people.

You've got to have a balance. I'm starting to realize that because it's really not healthy to be just going from one country to another. I don't really appreciate the lifestyle of it. Photographically, it's satisfying, but physically and mentally it's exhausting after a while.

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