Participants play with water guns during the Sinchon Water Gun Festival in Seoul, South Korea, July 9, 2016. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

A monkey is led by its trainer Qi Defang during training for a circus in Suzhou, Anhui province, November 29, 2014. Suzhou is known as the hometown of circus troupes in China and has more than 300 circus troupes. (Photo by William Hong/Reuters)

Students wearing masks rest amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in Seoul, South Korea, August 25, 2020. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

A girl looks on at a diver dressed as Santa Claus performing during a promotional event for Christmas in Seoul, South Korea on December 3, 2021. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

People spend the summer at Qingdao seaside in Shandong, China on July 3, 2019. The maximum temperature of Qingdao beach was 26 degrees Celsius on that day, and all the 9 sea bathing places were open, attracting a large number of visitors to the seaside to enjoy the cool world. (Photo by Huang Jiexian/ZUMA Press)

From house breaking in Johannesburg to hippos on the loose in Tbilisi to rioters attacking a policewoman in Burundi, Reuters photographers tell the story behind some of the most iconic pictures of the year. Here: Protesters drag a female police officer accused of shooting a protester in the Buterere neighbourhood of Bujumbura, Burundi, May 12, 2015. Goran Tomasevic: Protesters started throwing stones at a group of police, who then started to run away. The policewoman in the photo, Medikintos Inabeza, 33, got left behind and then some protesters started to push her, saying that she had shot a female protestor in the stomach with an AK47 rifle. I didn't see anything of that. There were 5 or 10 protesters pushing the policewoman at first, then others came and joined in. Up to 20 or 30 protesters were surrounding her at one point. The protesters kicked and beat her very badly; I also saw a couple of knives. I thought they were going to kill her... (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

Police spraying protesters with pepper spray inside Central Station after a Black Lives Matter rally in Sydney, Australia, 06 June 2020, a protest against the deaths of Aboriginal people in custody and solidarity with the US protests for George Floyd. (Photo by James Gourley/EPA/EFE)

Protesting university students flee as police fire stun grenades outside Parliament in Cape Town, South Africa, Wednesday October 21, 2015. The protests are part of a wave of nationwide protests that have shut down many South Africa universities, which say they are struggling with higher operational costs as well as inadequate state subsidies. (Photo by AP Photo)