As a senior at Sorabol High School, he had also joined the Buddhist monastic order to become a disciple of the Zen master Jihyo.
When his short story "Moktakjo" was published in Religion Weekly (Jugan jonggyo) in 1975, he was accused of defaming the order and duly excommunicated.
A depiction of the ten years Kim spent as a Buddhist monk and his eventual return to the secular world, the text addresses the conflict between individual enlightenment and redemption of the humankind as a whole.
In the trilogy of My Mother and the Frog (Eomma wa gaeguri), The Star (Byeol), and The Waning Moon (Janwol), the recurrent motif of 'Mother's inexplicable stomach pains' is linked to the traumatic impact of the war and national division on ordinary individuals.
The author's focus here is not on the war itself but on the survivors of its atrocities who must grapple not only with the material difficulties that continue to exert influence on their lives but with the responsibility of appeasing 'the lonely spirit of Father (read: the dead) still roaming the vast sky'.