Kim Ji Hoon was born in Daegu. After graduating from Hanyang University's Theater and Film Art Department, he worked as an assistant director on a number of films. He made his feature directorial debut in 2004 with the film Mokpo, Gangster's Paradise, starring Cha In Pyo and Cho Jae Hyun. His 2007 film May 18, about the Gwangju Massacre of 1980 and which starred Kim Sang Kyung, Lee Yo Eon, and Lee Joon Gi, earned him the Best Director award at the 2008 Korea Movie Star Awards. He went on to direct Sector 7, a 2011 action/horror film about a sea monster that attacked oil platforms, with an ensemble cast led by Ha Ji Won and Ahn Sung Ki. Distributor CJ E&M Pictures stated that Sector 7 was the highest-grossing South Korean film in China, but it was not well received by South Korean audiences, nor by critics, who panned its "flat" main characters and low-quality computer-generated imagery.

Kim's next work after that was The Tower, a disaster film about a fire in a high-rise apartment building, starring Sol Kyung Gu, Kim Sang Kyung, and Son Ye Jin. In response to the criticisms of Sector 7, Kim spent nearly two years working with the post-production team on CGI; the film was finally released in December 2012. Kim stated that he got the idea for The Tower from a variety of boyhood experiences, including his first visit to Seoul where he saw the 63 Building and wondered what it would be like to get trapped inside, and a later incident where he got stuck in an elevator, which he described as "the moment when I first felt dread".

His most recent work, of I Want to Know Your Parents, has been postponed indefinitely following the sexual assault scandal of actor Oh Dal Su, with no release date set to date. Edit Biography