When he was around nine years old, his parents moved to place him in a local seodang (school) in preparation for the gwageo, the demanding civil service examinations that determined placement in government intellectual jobs.

Around September or November,[8][3] by order of Donghak leader Ch'oi Sihyŏng (최시형; 崔時亨), Kim's troops stormed the Haeju fort in Hwanghae province, but the unit was eventually defeated by government and Japanese forces.

[8] On the way to Tonghua, near the Yalu River, which currently serves as the border between China and North Korea, the two men joined the righteous army commanded by Kim Iyŏn (김이언; 金利彦), who was in the midst of attacking Kanggye fortress.

On September 12, 1896, the Japanese consular agent Hagiwara Shuichi (萩原守一) found Kim guilty of the crime of manslaughter, and recommended execution by beheading.

[18] In the fall, Kim eventually met a monk with the surname Lee,[citation needed] who guided him to Magoksa, a Jogye Buddhist temple in Chungcheong Province.

[35][33] On April 29, member Yun Bong-gil detonated a bomb that killed and wounded several Japanese military and colonial leadership in Shanghai's Hongkou Park.

In order to avoid putting other Koreans at risk, Kim sent statements to various newspapers in Shanghai in which he claimed personal responsibility for organizing the KPO's activities.

It was not until the second day after their arrival that they told me that Kim Koo had both made the bomb and trained the young man in placing it--but I did not worry my wife by disclosing the fact at the time.

[39][40][43] A Chinese sympathizer named Chu Fucheng [zh] helped Kim and others escape to a hiding place at 76 Meiwan Street (梅灣街) in Jiaxing.

However, Kim thought a teacher would be too intelligent and might figure him out, and instead proposed marrying the 20-year-old owner of the boat he often rode, named Zhu Aibao (朱愛寶; 주애보).

[45] Around July 1932, Kim requested a meeting with Chiang Kai-shek, with the intent to ask for help in establishing a cavalry training school for the numerous Koreans in Manchuria.

[46] After some negotiations, they compromised; Chiang agreed to pay Kim 5,000 yuan per month, offered to hide him from the Japanese, and allow him to train Korean resistance fighters in the Luoyang branch of the Republic of China Military Academy.

With assistance from independence fighters such as Kim Sŏn-ryang (김선량; 金善亮), they secretly took a boat from Pyongyang to Dalian, another to Shanghai, and finally a train to Jiaxing.

[1][45] As a result of the bombing, the assassinations, the flight of KPG members from Shanghai, and the increasingly intense searching of the Japanese, the independence movement was thrown into chaos.

[53] In early 1939, they began negotiating their merger in earnest, but sides had somewhat flipped since 1935; Kim proposed a single party, while the left-leaning groups wanted a multi-party government.

[53] After several meetings, on May 10, the two Kims released a joint statement (동지·동포 제군에게 보내는 공개통신) advocating for a one-party government and listing ten shared ideals for the liberated Korea.

[53] On August 27, their parties participated in the Korean Revolution Movement Unification Seven Group Meeting (한국혁명운동통일 7단체회의) in the Qijiang District of Chongqing, although the two Kims did not personally attend.

The latter is slightly better with ingenuity, but lacks in morals and renown, and would struggle to lead a unified government.Kim placed the blame of the collapse in negotiations on the left-leaning parties, an assessment that the right-leaning Kuomintang generally agreed with.

In a later January 1940 letter, he predicted that if right and left failed to find common ground now, the Korean peninsula would be "stained red with blood" in the future.

On October 8, the KPG modified its constitution, with particular intent to reorganize the chief executive to have greater power in order to account for management of a standing army.

[56] In April 1942, in a presentation to President Roosevelt, Chinese foreign minister T. V. Soong outlined their plan to merge the KLA and various militant Korean groups into an irregular army of around 50,000 men.

The KNRP also quickly submitted a motion to impeach Kim and the current government and concurrently managed to convince 17 members of the Independence Party to resign.

[72] On September 5, 1943, Kim met with Chiang and gave several requests, including public acknowledgement of the KPG as the representative government of Korea, greater independence of the KLA, and assistance for Koreans in Central Asia who had been deported in 1937.

[73]Finally, on May 1, 1945, after a few months of negotiations, the KPG gained full control over the KLA under an agreement with the Kuomintang entitled Measures to Aid the Korean Liberation Army (원조한국광복군판법; 援助韓國光復軍辦法).

[73] In September 1944, Lee Beom-seok, then Chief of Staff of the KLA, began discussing a plan to send Korean guerrillas to the peninsula with various members of the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

[...] [W]hat worries me is that because we have done nothing in this war, our voice on the international stage will be weak.Kim, Lee, and the OSS began formulating a plan to have a division of the KLA return to the peninsula to perform reconnaissance and intelligence gathering tasks for the US.

Leveraging the nearly universal respect towards him, he was able to form a joint committee entitled Central Council for the Rapid Realization of Korean Independence [ko] (CCRRKI) with representatives from across the political spectrum.

US military governor of Korea John Hodge was furious at this announcement, and initially wanted Kim and the KPG to be arrested and deported back to China, but decided against this.

The Kuomintang Minister in Seoul rebuked Kim in a July 11, 1948, conversation, saying "damage has been done [...] by your recent activities in connection with the so-called North and South Korean Leaders' Conference held in Pyongyang".

[118] Steven Denney and Christopher Green wrote in Sino-NK that the KPO and its members have been described as terrorists in some circles in Japan, and that debate over the issue has contributed to conflict in Japan–South Korea relations.