She is considered a pioneer of Korean music abroad, having launched a successful career in Japan in the 1980s, where she is known as "the empress of enka.

"[1][2] The daughter of a barber in Gwangju, Kim was encouraged by her father to follow her passion for music and, on her way to Seoul, won the TBC National Song Rookie Star Show in 1974, debuting that same year under Oasis Records with the song Tell Me composed by Kim Hak-song.

[2] After singing the song In the Land of the Morning (아침의 나라에서) at the closing ceremony of the 1984 Summer Olympics, she made a Japanese version of it, which got her career off the ground and was followed by numerous successful albums and invitations to perform abroad.

[4] In the early 1990s, Kim released three to four albums a year, touring Japan and singing at charity events not only in the country, where she collected donations for victims of the 1993 Unzen volcano eruption and the Great Hanshin earthquake, but also in Korea.

[1] Kik resided in Japan for nearly 30 years from 1982 to 2012, when she returned to her native South Korea at the end of her marriage.