(Yonhap News)

 South Korean figure skater Kim Yu-na finished first in the ladies' short program at the  world championships here in Canada on Thursday.

   Kim scored 69.97 points in the short program to shoot to the top of the standings at the 2013 World Figure Skating Championships at Budweiser Gardens in London, southwest of Toronto.

   Kim is seeking her second world title after winning it all in 2009 in Los Angeles. This is her first world championships appearance in two years.

   Carolina Kostner of Italy, the defending world champion, is in second with 66.86 points, followed by Kanako Murakami of Japan with 66.64 points.

   The ladies' free skating is scheduled for Saturday evening local time, and Sunday morning Korean time.

   As the 14th among 35 skaters to take the ice, Kim earned 36.79 points in technical element score, which measures skaters' techniques, and 33.18 points in program component score, which assesses their artistry and choreography, for the 69.97 points total in the short program.

   Skating to "The Kiss of the Vampire," from the soundtrack for the film of the same name, Kim opened her program with a perfect triple lutz-triple toe loop combination. She also had a clean landing on her second jump, a triple flip, but was deemed to have taken off on a wrong edge of her skate.

   Skaters must take off on the inside edge of their skate on flips, but Kim appeared to have launched from the outside edge. Kim nailed her final jump of the program, a double axel, and performed flawless spins and step sequences the rest of the way.

   Kim fell shy of her best short program score of this season, 72.27 points set at the NRW Trophy in Germany last December. She holds the highest-ever short program score with 78.50 points from the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

   Kim frowned for a moment when the score was announced. She said afterwards that she was a bit disappointed but had "no regrets" over her short program.

   "I was a bit shaky in my first spin," said Kim, who lost 0.43 points on the flying camel spin early in the program. "My score was lower than what I'd expected, so I figured I must have lost points from the spin. But I think I showed everything I could and I have no regrets."

   She said she enjoyed skating in the middle of the pack, rather than later in the day with other title contenders.  "I think I would have been more nervous if I had been grouped with other top skaters," Kim said. "I tried to take one element at a time like I was practicing."

   Despite the mediocre spin, Kim said she is feeling "100 percent."

   "Other than the spin, I did everything else cleanly," she said. "I will try to do my best in free skating."

   Kostner ranked second in the short program despite falling on the second jump of her triple-triple combination. She had the highest program component score in the field with 33.85.

   Murakami, an 18-year-old from Japan, skated a cleaner program than Kostner and posted the best technical element score of the day with 36.87, but managed just 29.77 in her program component score.

   Mao Asada of Japan, a two-time world champion regarded as a chief rival to Kim, scored 62.10 points to rank sixth after the short program. She two-footed her landing on a triple axel, her signature jump, and botched her takeoff on a triple loop and managed just a single rotation in the air.(Yonhap News)