Her father, Yun-bang, started attending church at an early age was an educational pioneer, establishing an elementary school in his hometown.

Thus while attending Yeondong Women's School, Maria Kim was influenced by the nationalistic consciousness of her uncle's household.

Kim was one of many students who gathered outside of the Korean YMCA in Tokyo, Japan, and demonstrated against the Japanese murder of King Kojong and the annexation of Korea.

[3] Because her permanent lesions from torture she was granted medical leave, and with the help of American missionaries escaped to Shanghai.

She studied at Park College and the University of Chicago as a foreign exchange student, earning a master's degree.

In New York, she helped establish the Keunhwahoe, a patriotic Korean association for women, along with fellow exchange students Bak In-deok, Hwang Ae-deok, among others.

She also spoke at Plymouth Church and the talk was titled “What Christianity Means to Me-A Korean.”[8] In 1933, she returned to Korea, but was prohibited from residing in the Seoul area and from teaching in any position outside of theology by Japanese authorities.

She worked as a teacher at Martha Wilson Seminary, but the injuries sustained from torture resurfaced and she collapsed in her home.

Maria Kim was mentioned in newspapers in the United States as well as Soh Jaipil's journal, Korea Review.

"The Korean Commission here has received a report from Dr. Frank W. Schofield, a Canadian medical missionary in Korea, who is home on a furlough, which reads: Maria Kim (a young girl student and graduate of the Presbyterian Mission School in Seoul, who had been arrested for the second time because of her connection with the independence movement) has been sentenced to three years' imprisonment at hard labor.

)"[9] “Maria Kimm [sic], a young woman of twenty-five years of age, whom I have known from a child, is now locked up in the inner prison.

The same as that which sent Madame Breshkovaky to the salt mines of Siberia-she is a patriot and would give her life to ace Korea free.

"[10] "Miss Maria Kimm, a Christian young woman of Taiku, has been arrested with other Korean girls on the charge of seditious action against the Japanese government.