On May 19, 2017, Kim received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from the State University of New York "in recognition of the profound impact Professor Kim has had as a cultural and literary bridge between Korea and the United States." In 2018, Kim taught at George Washington University as Dean's Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities and at the University of Málaga in Spain as a Visiting Professor. In the same year, Felipe VI, King of Spain, decorated Kim with La Orden del Merito Civil (The Order of Chivalry). In 2019, Kim taught at the University of California, Irvine as a Visiting Professor.
Professor Kim received his Ph.D. in English from SUNY/Buffalo under Professor Leslie A. Fiedler and studied comparative literature at Columbia University under Professor Edward W. Said. Professor Kim has received, among others, the SUNY/Buffalo Internationally Distinguished Alumni Award, CU Distinguished Alumnus Award, and the Fulbright Distinguished Alumnus Award. In 2008, Kim received the prestigious Kim Hwantae Award for Literary Criticism and in 2014 the Woo Ho Humanities Award.
Previously, Professor Kim has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, Pennsylvania State University, and Brigham Young University and conducted research at Harvard-Yenching Institute and Oxford University.
He was the founding President of the Korean Association of Literature and Film, President of the International Association of Comparative Korean Studies, President of the Korean Association of Modern Fiction in English, and President of the American Studies Association of Korea.
A prizewinning literary critic and the author of 25 books, Kim initiated the debate on literary postmodernism for the first time in Korea in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He was also a pioneer in postcolonialism and cultural studies in Korea. His books on postmodernism, postcolonialism, and cultural studies have greatly influenced writers and scholars in the Korean republic of letters.
Kim was editor of literary journals such as Literature & Thought, 21st Century Literature, Contemporary World Literature and Korea Journal. In addition, Kim has been a regularly featured columnist for the Korea Herald since 2003. His Herald columns have frequently appeared in international media such as The Nation, the Progressive Party, USA, the China Post, the AsiaOne, the Pakistan Observer, the Star, Yahoo! News, the Asian Views, The Straits Times, The Kathmandu Post, The Statesman, The World Weekly and others. He served as co-editor of Korea Journal published by the Korean National Commission for UNESO for 2015-2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Seong-kon