[2] He rose to fame in 1968 when he was awarded a prize by the Hankook newspaper for his poem Sound of a Loom.
In 1970 Kim won another prize with the Seoul Daily newspaper for his poem Drowned Dreams.
This close relationship with everyday life, as well as the subtlety of the emotions are not only a characteristic of Korean poetry, but particularly of Kim Jong-Chul.
who argue that this talent can be explained with Kim's biography which includes extreme poverty and growing up in war time.
Kim distanced himself from these motifs in his second collection of poetry, which had a more light-hearted approach to life matters.
It is argued that this drives the author to search for the deeper meaning in everything, even if it appears trivial or insignificant.
Kim argues that there is no meaning in the objects themselves: "If all humanity were to disappear from this earth, a diamond would be nothing but a stone."
However, this also helped Kim to be viewed as one of the finest Korean poets of recent times.