Kang Ik-joong received his BFA from Hong-IK University, Seoul, and his MFA from Pratt Institute in New York. Kang has exhibited widely, including a one-person exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York in 1996 and a two-person exhibition with Nam June Paik at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion, Connecticut. He had group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany, and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul. He was awarded the special Merit prize in the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997. In 2000 he finished a permanent mural project, which was installed at the San Francisco International Airport.
Kang has received many awards including a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship. Kang's work is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California, the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, and the President's Committee on Arts and Humanity, Washington, D.C. Kang lives and works in New York.