SOUTH KOREA: UNESCO AMBASSADOR OF PEACE PHAN THIKIM PHUC DELIVERS A PEACE MESSAGE TO WAR TORN SOUTH KOREA

Record ID: 350204

  • Title: SOUTH KOREA: UNESCO AMBASSADOR OF PEACE PHAN THIKIM PHUC DELIVERS A PEACE MESSAGE TO WAR TORN SOUTH KOREA
  • Date: 29th November 1999
  • Summary: SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA (NOVEMBER 29, 1999) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. LV/SV: VARIOUS OF NAPALM VICTIM PHAN THI KIM PHUC AND PULITZER-PRIZE WINNING PHOTOGRAPHER NICK UT WALKING INTO NATIONAL CEMETERY (2 SHOTS) 0.09 2. SV: KIM PHUC AND NICK UT PLACING FLOWERS IN FRONT OF THE MEMORIAL MONUMENT 0.15 3. SCU/MV: VARIOUS OF KIM PHUC LIGHTING INCENSE IN FR
  • Embargoed: 14th December 1999 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
  • Country: South Korea
  • Reuters ID: LVAEMSFIPOEEZSYA26SK40P9SLIW
  • Story Text: UNESCO ambassador of peace Phan Thi Kim Phuc has
    delivered a message of peace to South Korea, one of the
    countries in Asia ravaged by war in the past decades.

    Phan became a symbol of suffering during the Vietnam War
    when a photo was sent around the world showing her screaming
    in pain following a napalm attack.

    Phan, accompanied by Pulitzer-prize winning
    photographer Nick Ut, visited South Korea's National Cemetery
    on Monday (November 29) to pay their respect to those who lost
    their lives in the Vietnamese and Korean wars.

    Offering flowers and incense in front of a memorial
    monument at the cemetery, Phan and Ut bowed their heads to
    observe a moment of silence.

    "I like to think of that little girl, screaming, running
    off the road, as being not just a symbol of war but a symbol
    of a crying for peace," said Phan, pointing to the jacket
    photo of her biography at a news conference held in Seoul.

    "I forgive but I do not forget, in order to prevent the
    same thing happening again," said Phan.

    On June 8, 1972, South Vietnamese planes accidentally
    dropped napalm on their own soldiers and civilians in the
    village of Trang Bang.

    Terrified children and confused soldiers fled the
    inferno caused by the mistake bombing.

    Phan, now aged 36, suffered third-degree burns
    throughout her body and had to undergo 17 operations over a
    period of 14 months.

    Then just nine years old she ran naked along the road
    screaming.The clothes she was wearing had been burned off
    her.

    That image was captured by Associated Press photographer
    Nick Ut and the picture was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in
    1973.

    "The photographs has also enabled me to set up the Kim
    Foundation, which is a charitable foundation to help child
    victims of war," Phan said.

    It is based in Chicago, Illinois and Toronto, Canada,
    and is set to help young victims of landmines in Cambodia as
    its first project.

    Other Pulitzer-winning photographs, including one of a
    the 1968 street execution of a Vietcong by a South Vietnamese
    general were also on exhibit in Seoul.

    Phan also visited veterans of the Korean war in Seoul,
    many who lost their limbs in the 1950-53 conflict with the
    Stalinist north.

    She showed the patients in the veterans hospital the
    wounds inflicted on her arm by the napalm bombing,
    Phan will stay in South Korea for four days.

    She currently lives with her husband and two children in
    Toronto, Canada.


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