Hyae-bae Kim was born on January 13th, 1925, in the city of Daeku in Korea. With the encouragement of her parents, she became unusually well-educated for a woman of her time.  A graduate of Kyoungbook Women’s High school, she enrolled in the Kyoungbook College of Education for two years, eventually obtaining a degree from the art department of Hong-ik University’s Graduate school. However, like many women of her time, her ambitions were forced into the background by an early marriage. As her husband served in various government positions, she was left to run the household on her own, managing to raise four children while learning French and English in her spare time. 

At the age of 46, Kim was able to resume her career, achieving her first major success as an artist in 1973 with her acceptance into the National Art Exhibition. Her career flourished until 1980, when a military coup overthrew the Korean government and, because her husband had risen to the post of Prime Minister, her family fell on hard times. The resultant stress caused her to be stricken with apoplexy and hemiplegia. Despite her partial paralysis she continued to paint, and in 1982 was given the Shinsaimdang Award, the most authoritative and honorable award for a Korean woman, for her life-long achievements as an artist, mother, and wife. Painting until the end, she passed away in March 1997.

Her daughter-in-law, Yeon-ah Joo, a professor in the Department of Creative Writing in Jangan University, refers to her as “an Albatross”; her artistic career was short, but she flew high and far.