Hà Tĩnh
Kim was born in Nghi Xuân, Hà Tĩnh Province, in northern central Vietnam in 1883. At the time, French Indochina had just been formed after the colonization of Vietnam, and Hà Tĩnh was part of the central region, which had become a French protectorate under the name of Annam. In the immediate decade afterwards, the province was the scene of a guerrilla movement led by Phan Đình Phùng that attempted to expel the French authorities. The movement was particularly popular in the Nghệ An-Hà Tĩnh region, which had boasted a long line of nationalist icons.