Born in North Pyongan, he did his early schooling in China and Korea, and had a brief career as a teacher before his connections with the nascent Korean independence movement led to his imprisonment.

He returned to South Korea in 1960 following the April Revolution which ended the rule of Syngman Rhee, and served briefly as Minister of Foreign Affairs under the Park Chung Hee junta.

Being one of the most experienced and high-ranked among the officer corps that commanded the early Republic of Korea Army, he was nicknamed the "Five-star General".

[1] At age 15, shortly after the beginning of Japanese rule over Korea, he went to Fengtian (today Liaoning), China to attend a primary school there.

[5] However, Japanese secret police were increasingly active in Northeast China hunting down Korean partisans, and for his own safety Kim left the region and went to Shanghai.

While assigned to the latter post, at the request of Kim Koo of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, he provided Lee Bong-chang and Yun Bong-gil with the bombs used in 1932 in the Sakuradamon assassination attempt against Emperor Hirohito and the Hongkew Park attack on Japanese troops which killed General Yoshinori Shirakawa of the Shanghai Expeditionary Army.

[2] In 1934, he was reassigned to the Luoyang branch of the Republic of China Military Academy, where he was in charge of a special course for Korean officer candidates in the ROC army.

Once he learned of the North Koreans' 28 June capture of Seoul, Kim had his forces retreat to the south bank of the Han River and set up a defensive line, which they were able to hold for six days until 3 July when North Korea had recovered sufficiently from the demolition of the Hangang Bridge to begin sending tanks across the river.

[30][31] Kim's objections to the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea later led him into further conflict with the Park regime.

[2] While the treaty negotiations were ongoing, Kim co-authored a series of op-eds along with Association of Families of Patriotic Martyrs president Koo Sung-suh,[e] former Minister of Justice Lee In, Christian philosopher Ham Seok-heon, former prime minister Byeon Yeong-tae, and linguist Kim Yun-gyeong [ko], which were published on the front page of the Kyunghyang Shinmun in February 1965.

[33] After he failed to achieve that goal, he issued a statement on behalf of the council calling for the National Assembly to be dissolved and a new general election to be held.

[35] Two days later, Kim and three co-signers of that statement—former Minister of Defense Park Byung-kwon [ko], former Korean Central Intelligence Agency director Kim Jae-chun [ko], and former minister without portfolio Park Won-bin—were arrested and charged with criminal libel in relation to its contents, and were held at the Seoul Correctional Institute (the former Seodaemun Prison).

[50] Following the election, Democratic Unification Party leaders expressed regret for participating, and Kim pledged to dedicate the remainder of his life to fighting for the return of democracy.

[51] Later that year, he was one of thirty opposition politicians to sign a petition calling for constitutional reform and free elections, and in 1974 he became one of the founding members of the Citizens' Conference for the Restoration of Democracy [ko].

[52][53] In 1977 Kim was elected the sixth president of the Korea Liberation Association [ko], an organisation for Korean independence activists and their families.

[58] Roughly 1,500 people visited the family home to pay their respects, including Chun Doo-hwan, United States Forces Korea commander John A. Wickham Jr., and fellow independence activist Lee Kap-sung [ko].