Seong-Kon Kim is a professor emeritus of Seoul National University and a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College. From 2012 to 2017, Kim was President of the Literary Translation Institute of Korea (a ministerial appointment with the Government of the Republic of Korea). On May 19, 2017, Kim received an Honorary Doctorate of 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.”
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.
He was the founding president of the Korean Association of Literature and Film from 1998 to 2001, and was president of the International Association of Comparative Korean Studies from 2001 to 2003, president of the Korean Association of Modern Fiction in English from 2004 to 2006, and president of the American Studies Association of Korea from 2007 to 2008. Kim was chairman of the Development and Promotion Council of the English Language and Literature Association of Korea from 2004 to 2005.
A prizewinning literary critic, 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 Korean writers and scholars. In 2008, Kim received the prestigious Kim Hwantae Award for Literary Criticism and in 2014 the Woo Ho Humanities Award.
Kim was the 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 China Post, AsiaOne, Pakistan Observer, The Star, Yahoo! News, 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 UNESCO for 2015-2016. Kim was appointed as head judge of the prestigious Ho-am Prize Selection Committee, a Korean version of the Nobel Prize, and also the Segye Ilbo Literary Prize. Presently, he is a judge for two prestigious literary awards: the Yi Sang Literary Award and the Park Kyungni Literary Prize.