Kim has at last returned, mature and ever graceful. O n the podium, Kim smiled but not wholeheartedly. Kim didn't look basking in glory. Her composure looked rather apprehensive. She stood almost emotionally detached.

Kim opened up with triple lutz and triple toe, then went for triple flip. Both elements were as strong as ironclad. Her triple salchow was a cracker slapping in the face. Her arms and her upper body intricately coordinated with the flow of music, and her fingertips almost drew the invisible string of notes to the spectators like a conductor. Jumps didn't disrupt or compromise continuity of transitions. As the music escalated to the climax, her body moved in sync with the rise and fall of the score. It was one of the finest pieces in presentation.

In the lyrical and retrospective tune of Les Miserable, Kim brilliantly transformed her seamless technical mastery into thematic triumph. Even a fter two year long break, Yuna Kim's Les Miserables shows how technically advanced her skate has become lately. But what's peculiar about Yuna Kim's Les Miserables is not her technical superiority but a story in it.

In her crystalline presentation, Kim skates as though she has lost herself in it, deeply emotional and lamentable like her personal vulnerability in retrospection. It is heart-breakingly lamentable and shockingly beautiful to watch.

Innocent joy and youthful power within which Kim once radiated are missing in her skate. Her commanding glory isn't there anymore. Instead, artistic presentation soars in technical perfection. The incredible degree of malleability and aesthetic polishing in her skate is surreal. Her sweats, tears, regrets and unspoken heartaches are all present, louder than cannonball fire.

It is a story of a young figure genius who has undergone emotional upheaval in the height of her career. Since she had won the 2010 Olympics, Kim lost to Asada in the concurrent Worlds. In 2011 Worlds, very few had doubted Kim's easy victory but she again lost to Ando after the bitter split with her mentor as well as coach Brain Orser.

Since her monumental victory in Vancouver Kim, personally, more lost than gained.

In the 2013 Worlds, Kim said she wanted to give her fellow south Korean skaters an opportunity to experience Olympics, and that's what has inspired her to finally retie the laces and wade through the buzzing cloud of speculation to compete again.

Serene like a nymph, and unstirred by the explosive magnificence exuding from her fingertips, Kim looks ever oblivious of the competition itself, as she moves on the ice to become a part of program, leaving the audience awestruck and speechless.

It is just marvelous in our eyes.

성숙하고 언제나처럼 우아한 김연아가 마침내 돌아왔다. 포디움에 선 그녀는 미소를 지었지만 기쁨에 넘치는 미소는 아니었다. 승리의 영광을 맘껏 누리는 것처럼 보이지도 않았다. 걱정스러운 것처럼 보이기도 했다. 그녀는 감정적으로 초연한 태도를 유지한 채 서 있었다.