His research interests concentrate on particle physics and cosmology and has many contributions to the field, most notably the suggestion of the invisible axion.

He graduated from Kyunggi High School and earned his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Seoul National University in 1971.

[2][3] With H. P. Nilles, he formulated and presented the solution of the μ problem in supergravity, then he led the calculation of the cosmological effect of the gravitino.

[4] From the collapse effect of the supergraviton which interacts much weaker than a light axion or axino, Kim obtained the upper limit of the reheating temperature of the universe 109GeV and that made an early contribution of the field of cosmological research about heavy and weak interacting particles.

He contributed to the development of standard model from the higher-dimensional theories by reducing the dimensions of orbifold and was absorbed in the cosmological constant problem and gave a clue of the solution of it in 5d spacetime.