Kim Ch’anggŏl was born in Myŏngch’ŏn’gun in North Hamgyŏng to an impoverished family of farmers in 1911. He moved to China at the age of 6 with his family, where they moved Zhangjia Village (長財村), Jixin District (智新區), Longzheng County [龍井縣, known as Helong County at the time], and Jilin Province (吉林城). He received his education at Daesung Middle School (대성중학교로) in 1927, where he became influenced by the literature of the Korean Artist Proletarian Association (KAPF). He dropped out in 1928 because he could not afford tuition, and worked as a farmer with his parents while being active in the Goryeo Communist Youth Association (고려 공산 청년회).
During his youth, he travelled extensively around Seoul, northern Korea, and northeast China working as a day laborer after his plans to travel to Japan to support the reconstruction of the Korean Communist Party fell through. His travels built his sympathy for laborers and impoverished settlers throughout Manchuria.
He began writing in 1934 after he returned from his travels, while he was working as a teacher at Shindong and Myongdong Elementary School and establishing local connections with Manchurian community organizations. He published his first short story “Legend of Mubin’gol” (무빈골 전설) in 1936 and published a total of 45 short stories and poems until he gave up writing in 1944 in protest of Manchukuo’s regulations of national literature. He remained active in the Manchurian literary scene through serving as a professor of literature at Yanbian University and working as a Chinese translator. He continued researching Korean literature despite being placed under heightened scrutiny during the Cultural Revolution.
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