Attention for his "ballpoint paintings" which are praised for their human character and violence in the modern world. It takes hundreds of thousands to a million lines to complete a drawing with a ballpoint pen, which yields only a couple of a year even if he spent ten hours a day on it. It is the right method for creating highly concentrated energy, but it has a limited range of expression at the same time. A couple years ago, he went back to colors. He might change his materials at any time.
In around 2004, Kim went away for his health to Kangkyung where he rested and grew vegetables. He took a small turn in his painting at the time of working with plants. "Painting was an old habit for me but farming was completely new and hard. I tried a small painting while I was working on vegetables. I painted more than 300 pieces. What I learned from those small pieces was that a small postcard sized piece was still a whole work. There was so much to paint on the small canvas. You can fit infinity on it. I found out that everything can be a painting while I painted a few hundred small pieces.”
He has lived in Seoul and Busan for 10 years, and now he is thinking about building a studio in Jeju Island as well. "I hiked an oreum near Jeju Stone Park and saw the area at sunset. The sky was bizarre and it was cold. I think I saw something then. I've been painting that scene, and it is not finished. I've been working on landscape recently, and the Jeju series is one of them. Jeju's untamed landscape suits me. There isn't much to say about landscapes in fact. Scenery beyond the human reach draws my attention. I am not looking for a primeval forest. If I see some weeds, I paint them. It is not an easy painting to look at, it draws out my style. Paintings come from one's inner world. But, they become rather vague as I continue working on them. I am looking for the spiritual aspects and movements, power and supernatural energy that ordinary things embody.”