Kim Tschang-Yeul was a South Korean artist in France known for his abstract paintings of water droplets.

In 1958, Kim formed the Modern Artists' Association and joined the Art Informel movement, led by Whanki Kim, a pioneering abstract artist of Korea. In 1965, he received a Rockefeller Foundation grant to study at the Art Students League of New York. In 1969, he moved to Paris and lived there for the next 45 years.

He has been compared to Lee Ufan and Nam June Paik and described as a "towering figure of Korean modern art". Kim was named a chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1996 and received a silver crown (eungwan) of the Order of Cultural Merit in 2013.

Kim was born in Japanese occupied Korea on 24 December 1929 in Maengsan (modern-day North Korea) and was the eldest in a family of six children. After his hometown was taken over by the Soviet Civil Administration following the division of Korea in 1946, he was arrested for holding an anti-communist pamphlet at the age of 17. After being held for 10 days, he fled to Seoul, at the time under US control. In Seoul, he lived in a refugee camp for a year.

Kim studied art at Seoul National University until the communist capture of Seoul during the Korean War in 1950. Following the capture, he escaped to Jeju Island where he worked as a police officer. He returned to Seoul in 1953 when the violence ceased, and worked as an art teacher in High School. He was the founding member of Hyeondae misulga hyophoe (Contemporary Artists Association) in 1957.

He is the father of French artist Oan Kim.