[1] In 2012, Kim won the Piolet d'Or "Asia Award" with An Chi-young when they made the first-ever ascent of Himjung (7,092m) in Nepal in 2012 via its southwest face.

[2] In 2017, Kim and his two climbing partners were awarded an Honourable Mention for the 2017 Piolet d'Or for their ascent of Gangapurna's south face (7,455m, 2016) in a "bold lightweight alpine style", the first Koreans to receive such a citation.

[1][3] In 2013, he became the first Korean to climb all 14 of the eight-thousanders without using supplemental oxygen;[4] he also set a record for completing the feat in the shortest time at 7 years, 10 months and 6 days.

[5][2][4] He was killed on 11 October 2018, alongside several other fellow South Korean climbers and local mountain guides, in Nepal when a snowstorm destroyed their 3,500m-altitude base camp beneath Gurja Himal in the Dhaulagiri.

[10] By the 1990s, Kim was rock climbing routes graded 5.12,[11] and participated in two Karakoram expeditions organized by UOS Alpine Club: Great Trango (6,286m, 1993) and Gasherbrum IV (7,925m, 1996).

The trips were beyond arduous: he fell into a crevasse numerously, his ankle sprained, the jeep overturned, starved many days, suffered from desolation and hallucination, bandit-attacked and murder-threatened.

… Standing on the summit gives no pleasure nor any meaning whatsoever when lacking this: the true Nanga begets only when I return alive with my teammate.”[citation needed] He then began to climb the fourteen eight-thousanders.

The still young and relatively unheard-of Kim shined to the eyes of Hong Bo-Sung, the leader of Busan Alpine Federation's fourteen-peak project.

Under the leadership of Hong—a studious leader and a person of understanding—combined with Kim's skills and experience on high mountains, Busan Dynamic Hope Expedition excelled on 8000m peaks.

Highly pragmatic in their approach, the expedition consisted of a small team of three to four, barely relying on external support such as Sherpas and oxygen tanks.

Interestingly, Kim specified the following three criteria in the choice of climbing destination: the potential merit of exploration in the entire travel, the mountain's significance in the local culture, and the planned route's naturalness.

The Google Earth image shows a massive serac at the edge of the upper plateau on 5,900 m to the west of Gurja Himal's summit.