Hi Kyung Kim was born in South Korea.
She graduated from Seoul National University with a BA and the University of California, Berkeley, with an MA and PhD, where she studied composition with Andrew Imbrie, Olly Wilson, Gérard Grisey, and Sung-Jae Lee.
Berkeley's George C. Ladd Prix de Paris, she worked at Institut de Rechéreche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) and École Normale Supérieure in Paris from 1988 to 1990.
[1] After completing her studies, Kim took a position as assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
She returned to Korea in 1985 and 1998 for research and study of Korean music, and also researched the music of Elliott Carter at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland.