After covering myself from head to toe in protective clothing in the hope of protecting me from radiation, I went to accompany evacuees who were temporarily allowed to visit their homes in the 20 km no-entry zone surrounding the tsunami-crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, a place now notorious for its radiation leaks.

My destination was Okuma town where the whole population of about 11,000 had been evacuated since last year’s earthquake. The town is still afflicted with high levels of invisible radiation.

In the evacuees’ memories, the town was a beautiful rural town with a close-knit community and the only unusual thing was that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was located close by.

Most residents accepted the nuclear plant because they believed in TEPCO, the operator of the nuclear power plant, and the government had told them their safety standards were impeccable. Some of the residents were skeptical but they could not raise awareness of possible dangers posed by the nuclear plant because it provided employment to the locals and it also gave financial subsidies to their local towns which were used to build infrastructure such as good roads and schools in exchange for tolerating the power plant which supplied electricity to urban areas.

By Kim Kyung-Hoon

Near midnight on March 12th, 2011, I was looking for Fukushima evacuees who had fled from towns near the nuclear power plant hit by a massive tsunami and earthquake the day before, and was now leaking radiation.

On hearing the warnings of meltdown and radiation leaks at the nuclear plant, my colleagues and I drove west from Fukushima airport where we landed by helicopter with two very simple goals: stay as far away as possible from the nuclear power plant, and find the evacuees.

However, there was no clear information where to find the evacuees and how far away we had to stay from the nuclear plant to ensure our safety in the panicky and chaotic situation.

After asking around for several hours in Koriyama city in Fukushima Prefecture, we found out that all the evacuees were getting radiation checks before they could be admitted to evacuation centers. When we got to the makeshift inspection station, which was set up at Koriyama Sports Complex, what we encountered was more like a scene from a sci-fi movie. Officials in protective suits from head to toe were scanning the refugees to check whether they were radioactive.

The evacuees were standing in a long line waiting for the radiation test. What I saw in their eyes was terror and anger at their government’s inefficiencies. Several people who had been tested for radioactivity had been separated from the group and they were sitting on the ground with despairing and puzzled looks as they waited for decontamination.

In the long line of evacuees, I spotted a little girl brought by her mother.

By Kim Kyung-Hoon Nobody knows when and where death will visit us.

The death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il shows that this phrase applies to everyone. Death is inevitable, even for an absolute ruler who was believed to be an eternal creature in his reclusive kingdom and who provoked the international community with a nuclear weapons program and brinkmanship.

(Kyodo photo)

Hours after the tearful announcement by North Korea state TV of their Great Comrade Dear Leader’s death, I was on a flight from Tokyo to Seoul to reinforce our Seoul bureau. On the flight, I recalled the chaos when North Korea’s founder and Kim Jong-il’s father Kim Il-sung died in 1994. At that time, most Koreans were haunted by fear of a possible outbreak of war. This fear made South Koreans rush to shops to stockpile basic necessities. It also triggered an intense debate between conservatives and pro-unification activists who insisted on a condolence call for the main culprit of the Korean civil war. My mother stayed awake at night worrying about the outbreak of war because I was supposed to go to mandatory military service in just a few months.

However, what I found after landing in Seoul was different from what I had worried about and imagined. There were no empty shelves and no fierce clashes between riot police and pro-unification activists on the streets. Signs of chaos and rejoicing over the death of a mortal enemy were hardly seen in my country as Seoul cautiously responded to the abrupt news that came at the end of 2011.

As I searched for visual subjects to illustrate this calm response, I met several North Korean defectors who had witnessed the death of Kim Il-sung in North Korea and now were viewing his successor Kim Jong-il’s death from the South. Most North Korean refugees who presently live in South Korea are not political asylum seekers but instead escaped from starvation. They said they experienced disbelief when they first heard the news of the death of the dictator but soon the disbelief turned to delight.

An orphan boy who lost his father in a life-threatening escape said he was filled with pleasure as if he finally had revenge for his father’s death. However, most said their joy soon changed to concern as they began to think that the suffering of the North Koreans would continue under the rule of Kim’s son and successor Kim Jong-un. Even though the new young leader has tasted the freedom and wealth of developed and open countries in Europe during his adolescence, this new supreme commander who ordered his troops to be human shields and bombs to defend his rule will hardly take a path of reform or open his kingdom. An uprising from North Koreans who have been brainwashed for more than half a century is beyond imagination, the defectors said.

By Kim Kyung-hoon

“Time flies so fast.”

I can’t count how many times I’ve mumbled this phrase while traveling in Sendai and Fukushima last week for the six month anniversary of the March 11th earthquake and disaster that left tens of thousands dead across Japan and caused the worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.

With the scenes of fear and hopelessness from the areas devastated in March and the hardship of the assignments still vivid in my memory, I feel like the disaster happened just a few weeks ago.

Six months had passed when I hit the road again with my TV colleague Chris Meyers, who traveled to the area with me in March, in order to document how much the tsunami-hit areas have recovered. As I once again traveled around the northern part of Japan, some areas have recovered at a pace I didn’t think possible in March.

By Kim Kyung-hoon

In 2004 I was in Indonesia’s Banda Aceh covering the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster which killed over 230,000 people in several south Asian countries. I met a tired-looking man tackling huge piles of rubble created by the tsunami in a brave effort to clean it up. He had only a shovel to use on the debris stretching on all sides as far as the eye could see. He stopped a moment and bemoaned to me that it would take more than several years to clear the rubble in his country. He also added that a rich country like Japan could clear it quickly with giant heavy construction equipment if a similar disaster happened in Japan. When I left Banda Aceh after my one-month stay there, the scenery going from the Reuters temporary base to the airport was almost the same as what I had seen on my first day there, and dead bodies still lay on the streets.

Last weekend, I traveled to Japan’s tsunami–destroyed towns again with my colleague to cover Japan’s traditional festival obon, when families welcome back the spirits of the dead.

It was five months after they had been struck by the March 11 magnitude 9.0 quake and huge tsunami. I could see that the Indonesian man’s insight was correct.

The piles of mud and rubble that had heavily covering roads only five months ago had been cleared and many of the destroyed buildings had been totally dismantled, even though construction equipment pushed the rubble into new huge mountains of debris in several places in each town, and destroyed towns have become home to crows.

Even though it looked bleak and desolate, much of the remnants of disaster have been removed. To make a combination picture of before and after the reconstruction work, I stored some pictures taken right after March 11 in my iPhone before I left from Tokyo.

By Kim Kyung-hoon

When I covered Fukushima’s nuclear crisis in March, the first radiation evacuees who I encountered were elderly people who had fled a nursing home which was located near the tsunami-crippled nuclear power plant which was leaking nuclear radiation.

On that night, most of the elderly who could not move well due to old age spent a cold night on a temporary shelter’s hard floor.

Their scraggly bodies, the nasty smell from those who were not able to relieve themselves, and faraway looks of the those who had dementia have been impressed onto my memory, one scene out of many from this tragedy which I will never forget.

In Japan, the most rapidly aging country in the world, the elderly have been more vulnerable to the disaster than any others. According to statistics provided by the Japanese government, over half of the 27,500 dead or missing tsunami victims have been identified as older than 60. In addition, a recent survey conducted by a local newspaper showed an increased death rate among the elderly who had been evacuated from nursing homes near the tsunami-crippled nuclear power plant in Fukushima. The paper reported that caretakers and experts said many of the elderly residents’ deaths resulted from a decline in strength caused by the move far from their nursing homes and it was likely that they could not cope with the change of living environment.

Among all this news, when I heard about a therapeutic robot named “Paro” who had been provided to some nursing homes to give psychological support for the elderly in Fukushima, I thought this could give hope and joy to many people involved with the tragedy.

We, photographers at Reuters, usually work outside the office.

In truth, we will go anywhere which is likely to guarantee worthy news stories and stunning visual images.

Therefore, the list of our working places is as various as our pictures.

You might find us somewhere like  the middle of a violent demonstration, miles away from a crippled nuclear power plant releasing nuclear radiation, on the deck of an aircraft carrier or on the roof of the Olympic stadium…..

To witness the historical moments and pursue capturing stunning images, we’ve happily thrown away the comfort of working in the luxurious Reuters office.

Therefore, my office, the Reuters news room in Tokyo, has been regarded as the last place where I can do shooting assignments,  and  I used to joke with my colleagues that the only thing I usually do in the office is make expense reports.

But I found out that my joke was totally wrong when I covered the Reuters Rebuilding Japan Summit this week and I discovered the office is a place full of potential colorful images.

As a Reuters photographer, I have covered many disasters and incidents over the last ten years but these things had little direct affect on my life. Just like the saying: “The photographer must be taken out of the picture”, I was a third party in most of these cases. By and large, those catastrophes had nothing to do with my personal life. Once my assignment was over, I used to go back to my normal life and switch from emergency mode.

But last month’s magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that sparked the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in Japan was different. I am not exempt from the fear caused by the disaster nor am I immune to the threat of the invisible nuclear radiation.

Since I deployed to near Fukushima prefecture to cover the nuclear crisis story last month, two palm size radiation monitors have been added to my MUST-carry items along with my camera equipment. The first thing I have to do after waking up in the morning is not drink a cup of coffee but instead check the radiation level. The number on the device has been the main criteria on whether I can get out of the car once inside the 20km evacuation zone from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Regardless of the level of background radiation, our white protective suits were mandatory to wear inside the evacuation zone. I also stood in line to receive radiation screening with other evacuees at a radiation check-up point whenever I had the opportunity during my assignment.

“Extraordinary, unique, outstanding….”

These words often promise an interesting news story and also they might guarantee success in someone’s job.

Mr. Watanabe, who I happened to find on the street, is an example of these words.

He is a sales clerk in an eyeglass company which has about 2,000 employees and his job is to sell eyeglasses to customers in a shop in one of the busiest shopping districts in Tokyo. His attire is not unique and more like a typical sales person in Japan. His black horn-rimmed glasses and dark-toned suits would remind you of a picture in a company poster of the most diligent employee of the year.

Contrary to his ordinary appearance, he sings rap songs while on duty.

Rapper Salesman Mr.Watanabe by Kim Kyung-Hoon from Reuters Tokyo Pictures on Vimeo.

Downhill from the height of a 30-story-building and soaring through the air: this is the definition of ski jumping. The skiers reminded me of birdmen, or extreme skydivers.

While I was covering the “birdmen” at the Sapporo Ski Jumping World Cup, I noticed a similarity between shooting ski jumping and the job of Siberian hunters, which I had watched in a TV documentary. Instead of the hunters’ trap, I set up a remote-controlled camera at the bottom of the slope to capture the leap.

Instead of their hunting rifle and telescope sight to pursue deer across the snow-covered Siberian plains, I had a 400mm lens with a converter in my hands and my viewfinder was aimed at the flying birdmen at a snow-covered ski resort. My camera fired like a gun whenever the birdmen appeared in my sights.

Like the hunters who chase game across snowy fields and endure long hours waiting to spring an ambush, I waded across a snowy field to the designated photo position to find a better position.

The cutting wind and large snowflakes were bearable as long as I had my camera in my hands as I knew a good image would be compensation for the enduring the conditions.