[2] Kim specializes in stories about Korean family life ― how traditional values conflict with the new and how women struggle to adjust to or resist the cultural suppression at home and work.
[7] In 2008's Mom's Dead Upset, a middle-aged woman rediscovers herself by taking a one-year break and declaring independence from her family after spending decades as a housewife looking after three children, a husband and a widowed father-in-law.
Kim was both praised and panned for her openness in dealing with the subject of same-sex relationships, but she wrote without hesitation, saying, "I approached the issue of homosexuality as though it could have happened to my son."
[12][13] In emphasizing the love between two handsome and intellectual people, Kim said her goal was to eradicate prejudice toward gay couples and make homosexuality no longer a taboo subject.
[15][16][17] Openly gay actor Hong Seok-cheon recalled that after he came out in 2000, he was fired from all his acting and hosting jobs, until Kim hired him in a supporting role in the 2003 drama Perfect Love.
[18] In A Thousand Days' Promise (2011), Kim explored the social problems associated with Alzheimer's disease, with Soo Ae giving an unsentimental portrait of a young woman slowly losing her memory and independence.
Its peak episode rating of 10.71% was an impressive number for pay-television standards because Korean cable channels rarely manage to touch 1 percent on most of their programs, whether they be dramas, sketch comedies, talk shows, documentaries and news.
Famous for her intense but meaningful dialogue, ad-libbing is forbidden and actors are required to say their lines exactly as her script dictates, word-for-word, down to her trademark fast tempo.
Kim had previously adapted her same-titled novel, which portrays the affection and conflict between a mother and her only daughter, into the 1992 film Flower in Snow starring Yoon Jeong-hee and Lee Mi-yeon.
"[25][26] Already in her sixties when she joined Twitter, Kim has lambasted the Hollywood film Avatar,[27] and the variety show I Am a Singer,[28] and declared that more than half of the current TV dramas are crude, "as if they were written by middle school students.
"[29] When asked her opinion of makjang dramas, which use racy material including sex, betrayal and violence and have become increasingly available to the general viewing audience, she was firm in her response: "Many producers and writers point to the ratings or viewers as reasons why they are popular, but I think they are very irresponsible.