Professor Lim's academic interest has been in the subjects such as national/corporate competitiveness, technological innovation, transfer and diffusion, international industrial/technological collaboration, South/ North Korean economic integration for national unification, East Asian Community, economic philosophy, etc. He is the original developer of the BSRC (Basic Science Research Capacity) Index, the Industrial/Technological Competitiveness Index, the Human Capital Index, and a new Measurement of Technological Progress Speed. He initially proposed the South/North Korean Special Economic Zone, the Five-Step Korean Unification, the South/North Korean Unification Program, the Northeast Asian Peace Treaty, Conference on Security and Cooperation in Northeast Asia, Optimal Social Security System, and other integrative plans. He has recently presented an elaborated economic philosophy in the name of "Neopragmatism" in contrast to the so-called "New Liberalism" which has been criticized as a cause of global financial crisis since 2008.

Professor Lim has presented many research papers in local/overseas conferences and they have been featured in major inter-national journals such as Technological Forecasting and Social Change and Journal of Asian Economics. His representative books include, for example, The People Shall Perish Where There is No Vision(Seoul: Mail Economic Daily Press, 1995), Forecast on the Future of Asia (Seoul: Mail Economic Daily Press, 1999), Prospects and Challenges of Asian Economy in the 21st Century (Beijing: Chinese Social Science Foundation Press, 1999), Korea in the 21st Century (New York: NOVA Science Publisher, 2000), Prospects for Korea and National Management Strategies (Paju: NaNam, 2007), and Quo Vadis Domini: A Blueprint for Growth-Welfare-Unification (Paju: NaNam, 2011). Professor Lim was bestowed the BAEKNAM Academic Award on May 15, 2002 from Hanyang University as well as the Best New Poet Award (November 07, 2006), the Best New Essayist Award (January 03, 2010) and the Korean Literature Award (April 24, 2013) from the Korean Bak-Doo-San Writers Association. At the international level, he also received the First Global Solutions Award (August 8, 2002) from the BWW Society/The Institute for the Advancement of Positive Global Solutions in Paris, France, as well as the Outstanding Scholarly Contribution Award, the Book of the Year Award (July 30, 2008) and the Distinguished Global Leadership Award (August 6, 2010) from the IIAS (the International Institute for Advanced Studies) in Germany.

Throughout the 1980s and beyond, Professor Lim has participated in shaping many important Korean economic policies. He has worked as a member of various Korean governmental committees, e.g., the Advisory Group to the Ministry of Defense, the Financial Development Committee under the Ministry of Finance and Economy, and the National Pension Preparatory Committee under the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. He has also served as an Outside Director of Woori Investment & Securities. In August 2012 he was appointed by the Korean Government as Executive Auditor of the Korea Securities Depository (KSD) which is the key infrastructure of the Korean financial market. Since then he has been devoting himself to the improvement of Korea's financial competitiveness by initiating several reformative measures.