Kim Hyung-cha was born in 1915 in Hamgyeongnam-do (now North Korea) during the Japanese colonial era. He set off to Japan in 1941 to study and graduated from Waseda University with a degree in law. While in school, he was conscripted and trained as a student soldier of the Japanese army, and, after liberation, he worked at a trading company called Chunwoosa. During the Korean War, he served as one of the first KATUSA (Korean Augmentation to the United States Army) soldiers. He later became the head of Chunwoosa’s Japan and Philippines branches and served as an elder of the Seoul Sungnam Church. Kim spent most of his later years in New York and New Jersey before passing away in 2003.