Hyun Sook Kim is an Associate Professor of Theatre and Dance where she serves as costume designer and teacher. She earned her MFA in costume design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, MA with a thesis in costume design at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and BA at Korea University in communications. At Ball State University, she teaches theatrical costuming, stage make-up, costume design, costume rendering and other costume-related classes. Since arriving at Ball State in 2005, she has successfully designed The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Antigone, Festival of Dance 2006, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, Rhythm and Soul: A Passion for Latin, Urinetown, The Wild Party, Indiana Choreographer's Dance Concert, Love's Labour's Lost.

Before coming to Ball State, Professor Kim has spent in Korea over 15 years in designing costumes at National Theatre Company, National Dance Company, National Ballet Company, Seoul Arts Center and LG Arts Center, and in teaching at many universities including the Korean National University of Arts, Dankook University and Chung-Ang University.

Professionally, she designed costumes for various large productions of drama, musical, dance, opera, concert such as 1988 Seoul Olympics International Contemporary Dance Festival, Oedipus the King, Othello, Carmen, Richard III, A Mid Summer Night’s Dream, Good Woman of Setzuan, The World of Minimalist Music, West Side Story, etc. She has won prestigious awards in Korea, including the 35th Dong-A Theatre Award for The Song of the Vagabond in 1999 and the 33rd Baek-Sang Arts Award for her work on Serpent Groom and His Bride in 1997. She also won both the 1996 2nd Korean Musical Award and the 1997 This Year's Design Award from Design House Inc. — the most prominent design magazine in Korea — for the musical The Last Empress.

As an artist and educator of immense skill, Professor Kim is internationally recognized costume designer and teacher who holds a wealth of international design experiences including professional work on stages in New York, Toronto, London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Osaka and Beijing. Her design of the musical production The Last Empress enjoyed a lengthy North American run including two stops at the Lincoln Center in New York City, at the Kodak Theatre and the Schubert Theatre in Los Angeles, and at the Hummingbird Center in Toronto. Recently, she has been asked to remount her designs for The Last Empress staged on the National Theatre of Korea in Spring 2007. The design work is the great achievement still going on running continuously in the world. Also, her costume work has been seen in world-wide exhibitions at Anthem Gallery in Soho, New York City, at Fashion Institute of Vienna, at Hotel Concorde La Fayette in Paris, at Nepal Art Council Gallery, at the Academy of Fine Arts of Uzbekistan, Confucius Temple Historical Area ot Tainan, Taiwan and at Prague Industrial Palace in 1999 Prague Quadrennial. Recently her design work has been exhibited in 2007 Prague Quadrennial and in 2008 USITT Design Expo.

She is also a professional member of USITT, OISTAT (Organization of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians)- Korea, International Costume Association, Korean Society of Costume, etc.

Her great hope is to dedicate to training of young theatre artists to make them grow to be soulful professionals.