Hoon Kim is a wood chemist, specifically in the field of lignin and plant cell wall chemistry.  Kim has particular expertise in structural characterization of biomass and plant cell wall components, including lignins and polysaccharides, using solution-state NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) technique and other analytical methods (GC-MS, pyrolysis, and HPLC).

Kim has invented and developed the novel whole-cell-wall gel-NMR technique that requires no fractionation of cell wall components. He also developed synthetic methods for lignin-related biosynthetic products, monolignols, molecular markers, and cell wall model compounds, and elucidated numerous new lignin and polysaccharide structures from wild-type and transgenic plants.