Im, born in Hwangju County of North Hwanghae Province when Korea was under the colonial rule of the Japanese imperialists, graduated from the then Hwangju Horticultural School and went to Japan. He was distinguished himself at a Japanese university for his preeminent capability, but had to suffer from national discrimination and humiliation.

He returned home after the homeland was liberated by President Kim Il Sung, and since then he came to start his scientific research in the true sense of the word.

Serving as the vice-director in charge of science at the then Pyongyang Botanical Garden and the director of the Central Botanical Garden and concurrent president of the then Academy of Forestry in succession, he had made great contributions to the education of rising generations and scientific research.

He succeeded in spreading dawn redwood, found out such oil-bearing trees as Juglans cordiformis and settled scientific problems arising in creating oil-bearing tree forest, thus making a dedication to developing the Juche-based forestation technology.

During his service as the director of the Central Botanical Garden, he had collected several thousands species of plants and cultivated several hundreds species of medicinal, aromatic and edible plants to be conducive to the development of national economy and improvement of people's health and their cultural and emotional life.

He had rendered services to preserving, cultivating and spreading hundreds species of gift plants in the country.

He had also brought up many holders of academic degrees in botany, pharmacology and other fields and authored precious books like "Korean Flora" and "Illustrated Book of Korean Plants".

He was awarded the Order of Kim Il Sung and the Labor Hero Medal and the titles of People's Scientist, academician, professor and doctor.

President Kim Il Sung highly praised him as a talented savant with ardent patriotism and merited person for having cultivated and spreading medicinal herbs and trees of good species.

His remains are buried at the Patriotic Martyrs Cemetery in Sinmi-ri.