Kim Tschoon-su graduated from the Department of Painting at Seoul National University and Graduate School at the same university, and received his MFA from California State University, San Francisco and PhD from New York University. In 1993, he was awarded the 3rd Total Art Grand Prize. In 1996, he was selected to represent Korean Pavilion at the 23rd Bienal de São Paulo, and in 2003, he was a visiting scholar at the University of Alcalá, Spain. From 1996 to 2022, he was a professor at the Seoul National University College of Fine Arts.