His songs, encompassing everything from mild humor to biting political satire, appear in dozens of Soviet movies, including Bumbarash, The Twelve Chairs, and An Ordinary Miracle, as well as the songs "The Brave Captain," "The Black Sea," "The Whale-Fish," "Cursed Lips," "Captain Bering," and "Baron Germont Went to War."

[1] Kim was born in 1936 in Moscow to Kim Chersan (1904–1938), a journalist of Korean descent, and Nina Valentinovna Vsesvyatskaya (1907-1974), a teacher of Russian language and literature whose grandfather, Vasiliy Vsesvyatskiy, was a protoiereus of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Ugodsko-Zavodsky Uezd of the Kaluga Governorate who baptized Georgy Zhukov.

[2][5] She was rehabilitated during the Khrushchev Thaw period in 1958, but before that, she was under the "101st kilometer" law and could not live in Moscow, so Kim's family settled in Maloyaroslavets, Kaluga Oblast.

[6] After returning to Moscow, Kim worked as a school teacher, and at the same time participated in the Soviet dissident movement, which cost him his job in 1968.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, he has been acclaimed throughout the Russian-speaking world and has performed in numerous locations in Russia, Europe, and the United States.