Kwang-Hyun Kim Of The St Louis Cardinals

SK Wyverns pitcher Kwang-Hyun Kim signed a two year deal with the St Louis Cardinals a couple weeks ago.  Kim was the first round pick of SK out of high school in the 2007 KBO draft and has spent his entire career with the team.  He had some really good seasons from 2008-10, going 45-13 with sub-3 ERAs over the three seasons.  Injuries cost him some time over the next few years and he became a less effective pitcher, posting ERAs in the 3's and 4's before he eventually needed Tommy John surgery after the 2016 season.  He missed the entire 2017 season while recovering but pitched pretty well in his 2018 return, going 11-8 with a 2.98 ERA and 130 strikeouts in 136 innings.  He followed that up with one of his best seasons ever in 2019, going 17-6 with a 2.51 ERA and 180 strikeouts in 190 1/3 innings.

He led the KBO in victories in 2008 and 2010, ERA and Winning Percentage in 2009 and strikeouts in 2008.  He was the KBO MVP in 2008 and won the "Best Pitcher" award (this has been called the "KBO Victory Award" since 2015 but I'm not quite sure what it was called before that) in 2008 and 2010.  He also won a Golden Glove in 2008.  He played on the Korean National Team for the 2008 Olympics, the 2009 World Baseball Classic and both the 2015 and 2019 Premier 12 tournaments.

The Cardinals signed Kim via the posting system but this was not the first time SK had posted him.  They posted him following the 2014 season and the Padres won the bidding rights to him but were unable to reach an agreement with him.

As a member of the 2009 Korean WBC team, Kim already has some US based cards.  He appeared in the Bowman Chrome WBC Prospects insert set and there's apparently 11 different parallel versions of his base cards.  There's also a couple different memorabilia cards for him in various Topps issues that year.  He also appeared in the Konami WBC Heroes set that year in Japan.  His first KBO card was from the 2010 KBO Game set.  He's pretty much been a regular in the KBO sets from Ntreev/Duael/SMG (Superstar Baseball) between 2014-16 and SCC between 2018-19.  TradingCardDB.com has a good list of his cards.  Here's a selection of them:

2009 Bowman Chrome #BCW34

2009 Konami WBC Heroes #W09R123

2010 KBO Game #AW-001

2014-15 Superstar Baseball Blue Edition #SBCBE-193-N

2015 Superstar Baseball Season Two Sticker

2016-17 Superstar Baseball Black Edition #SBCBK-028-AS

2018 SCC KBO Collection #SCCR-01/100

2019 SCC Premium #SCCP1-19/004