  Among countless channels of hard exclusive reactions, the kaon
electromagnetic form factors (EMFFs) are of special interest, which have been
measured up to $Q^2 \sim 50\;{\rm GeV}^2$ in the timelike domain. The kaon
EMFFs thereby serve an ideal platform to critically examine the validity and
effectiveness of perturbative QCD (pQCD) in accounting for hard exclusive
processes. In this work we confront the pQCD predictions that incorporate the
next-to-next-to-leading-order (NNLO) perturbative corrections, with the
available kaon EMFFs data set from experimental measurements and from lattice
predictions. The inclusion of the NNLO corrections turns out to have a
substantial and positive impact. If the profiles of the kaon light-cone
distribution amplitudes (LCDAs) are taken from the recent lattice QCD
prediction by {\tt LPC} Collaboration, the satisfactory agreement between
theory and data can be reached for both charged and neutral kaons, in both
spacelike and timelike large-$Q^2$ domains.
