Subject of famous photo to speak at UB
Kim Phuc travels around the world as a Goodwill Ambassador for United Nations

Most people remember her as the little 9-year-old girl fleeing her South Vietnam village with her arms outstretched in terror-her body burned by napalm-whose unforgettable photo captured the horror of war.

Today, 28 years later, Kim Phuc is a Canadian citizen who travels the world, meeting and talking with people about peace as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Phuc will speak at UB as part of a program titled "The Odyssey of Kim Phuc" to be held from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Wednesday in 110 Knox Hall on the North Campus. The program will begin with a screening of Shelly Saywell's 1997 documentary film, "Kim's Story," followed by a talk by Phuc about her life and mission.

The event is free and open to the public. Major sponsors are the Asian American Student Union and Alpha Kappa Delta Phi, an Asian-interest sorority, both at UB.

Phuc survived 14 months of painful rehabilitation from the third-degree burns that covered more than half of her body and has since lived though years of recovery from her wounds, involuntary use by the Vietnamese government as a propaganda tool, marriage, motherhood, and an escape to the West.

The suffering of the young Phuc in Nick Ut's photograph has been seared into the collective memory of the American people. This and other photos memorialized the long American war in Vietnam: a self-immolation by a Buddhist monk in 1963; a war weary American soldier burying his face in his hands in 1965; the execution of a Viet Cong soldier in 1968; a girl screaming over the body of a slain classmate at Kent State University in 1970, and streams of frightened civilians, Americans and Vietnamese, struggling to get aboard the last helicopters leaving Saigon in 1975.

However, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of Phuc, taken on June 8, 1972, is arguably the most stirring as it shows neither a combatant or a participating adult, but rather an innocent child: a 9-year-old casualty of war.

For more information about Phuc's visit to UB, contact Charles Bland at 645-7740 or Jessica Chiang at 645-9201.