Chung Won-young (정원영) is a Seoul-born pianist, keyboardist, composer and singer-songwriter, born on May 27, 1960, who turned 66 in May 2026. Berklee College of Music's alumni magazine calls him an influential piano teacher and performer in Seoul and describes his sixth album as straddling jazz and pop; Korean Wikipedia files him first as a popular-music artist and also lists jazz among his genres. He made his first album in 1993, has released a solo record roughly every few years since, scored seven films between 1992 and 2009, hosted radio and television programmes, and teaches at Howon University. He is billed Chung Won Young on Berklee's pages, on his 2005 band EP and on streaming services, and 정원영 on Discogs and Korean databases; Korean press and some databases also write Jung Won-young or Jeong Won-yeong (Wikidata's English label is Won-yeong Jeong).

His father bought him his first piano, and Berklee Today says he began classical piano at six; Yonhap, in 2015, puts the piano at age seven and says his father played him records by Eddie Fisher, Nat King Cole and Andy Williams. As a high school senior he was noticed by the singer Lee Jang-hee (이장희), and Yonhap says he went on to play keyboards in the bands 석기시대, 사랑과 평화 and Cho Yong-pil's 위대한 탄생. The earliest credits on Discogs match that picture: keyboards on a 1980 Shin Seo-hee single (Hyundai Records LA-042), and keyboards, synthesizer and vocals, with writing credits on most tracks, on the album 어디서든 by the group 쉼 (SRB Records, 1980).

In 1984 he left for Berklee. Berklee Today lists him in the class of 1989 and says he went after friends, among them the guitarist Han Sang-won, had enrolled there; the Seoul Shinmun, in 1999, says he spent six years from 1984 studying jazz piano, film-score composition and arranging, and Korean Wikipedia gives his degree as jazz studies. His piano teacher there was Dean Earl, and Berklee Today says that was his first exposure to jazz, which became his passion. He returned to Seoul in 1990, began playing with singers and as an instrumentalist, and, according to the Seoul Shinmun, took part in sessions for Lee Eun-mi, Park Jung-woon, Lee Seung-chul, Kim Hyun-chul, Jang Pil-soon and the duo Bom Yeoreum Gaeul Gyeoul. Discogs adds synthesizer and computer on Yeohaeng Sketch's 1991 album 추억여행, piano and keyboards on Kim Hyun-sik's Self Portrait (1996), keyboards on Lee Yoon-jeong's 進化 (1997), keyboards, piano and organ, with a drum credit as well, on three tracks of Panic's Sea Within (1998), and piano and organ on "마지막 로맨티스트" and vocoder on "고백" on Toy's Present (2001).

His earliest billing under his own name on Discogs is on the 1992 compilation 하나옴니버스 II (Hana Music HNCD 008), from the community label led by the singer-songwriter Cho Dong-jin, where he is credited as composer and pianist of "거리에 서서". That song became the third track of his first album, 가버린 날들 (Days Gone By), issued in June 1993 on Donga Corporation (VIP-20163). Discogs files it under jazz, rock and pop, and Bugs lists it as fusion jazz. The 1999 Seoul Shinmun counted three albums by then. The second, Mr. Moonlight (DMR, 1995), is billed on Discogs as produced by him, with all compositions and arrangements his, and Discogs gives it the style Contemporary Jazz. The third, Young Mi Robinson (Studio S, 1998), is another Bugs fusion-jazz entry, and the fourth, Are You Happy? (2003), has thirteen tracks including a radio edit of "Happiness", which has an official video from MUSIC&NEW.

He puts a piece called "Thanks" on every record he works on, a private way of saying thank you for being able to make music. He told the Kyunghyang Shinmun in 2015 that it began with the first Korean record he worked on, the bassist Song Hong-seop's album, where he placed "Thanks 1"; "Thanks 2" is the last track of 가버린 날들, "Thanks 3" is a 7:45 piece on Mr. Moonlight, "Thanks 4" is on Young Mi Robinson, and "a return home (Thanks 9)" closes Are You Happy?. "Thanks #6" is the number on "Gift", the track he contributed to the trumpeter Juhan Lee's 10+1 Ten Plus One (2001), where Discogs credits him as a featured artist on track 14; the same piece is titled "Thanks #6 (선물)" on his own band's 2005 EP, which also ties the two credits to one man. By 2015 the count had reached thirteen.

The jazz side of his career runs through other musicians of his Berklee generation. In April 1994 the Seoul Shinmun reported that the new fusion group Super Band, made of Berklee returnees and the two members of Bom Yeoreum Gaeul Gyeoul, was billed to play the second Spring Jazz Festival at the Seoul Arts Center: Chung and the pianist Han Chung-wan (한충완, a different musician) on piano, the guitarist Han Sang-won and the bassist Song Hong-seop, with Kim Jong-jin on guitar and Jeon Tae-gwan on drums, playing jazz mixed with pop and blues. The paper described him at that point as a lecturer in applied music at Seoul Institute of the Arts. In 1997 he and Han Sang-won are billed together on "석양" (Sunset), an instrumental of a Shin Joong-hyun song on the tribute album A Tribute To 신중현 (YBM Seoul Records SRCD 3455), disc two, track five. The Seoul Shinmun said in April 1999 that the two had formed a Chung Won-young and Han Sang-won band at the start of 1998, and in November 1999 that the Han Sang-won Band, with Chung on keyboards, Kang Ho-jeong on keyboards, the 17-year-old Jung Jae-il and the 21-year-old drummer Lee Sang-min, was becoming GIGS by adding the Panic singer Lee Juck. The paper credits Chung with two pieces on the first GIGS album, "아가에게" and the instrumental "Tripping Now". GIGS made two albums on Polimedia, GIGS (1999) and GIGS 02 (2000), and Korean Wikipedia dates the group from 1999 to 2001.

In 2005 he formed the Chung Won Young Band (정원영밴드) with his students. Its first record, an EP on Seoul Records (SRCD-3826, October 2005), is tagged jazz and rock on Discogs and fusion jazz on Bugs; its first track, "YK259 Zipper", also appears on the Korea Culture and Content Agency's Music From Korea sampler for the 2006 Midem fair and on the compilation Plugged In 21 Times (BIN Direkt, 2008). A second album followed in 2009, and in June 2020 the band returned with HOME after fifteen years, with the original members, by then session players for Lee Juck, Kim Dong-ryul, Lee Sora, Im Jae-beom and Yoon Jong-shin, according to Newstomato. Newstomato names a 2019 relay concert series at the Hakjeon theatre, organized by Kim Min-ki, as the occasion that brought them back together.

His solo albums after 2003 move between piano instrumentals and songs. 정원영 5 (Rubato, December 3, 2010; Discogs: jazz, pop) is a piano record, and Yonhap says seven of the ten tracks on 걸음걸이 주의보 (The Gait Warning, 2012) are piano pieces. For 사람 (People, 2015) he wrote and sang eight songs with a small band of his students, his first record built around his own voice. He told the Kyunghyang Shinmun he had been preparing a band album but had had a year of heavy feeling that he needed to put into songs; his father died in April 2015, and the one instrumental, "Oh My Papa", is for him. It came out on 푸른곰팡이, the successor of Hana Music, which Yonhap describes as the label of his first album (Discogs lists the 1993 release on Donga Corporation), and his son designed the covers of the sixth and seventh albums. The vinyl 볕 (Steeze, October 12, 2021; the cover is numbered 정원영 8) is again filed as jazz and pop on Discogs. 소풍 (Picnic) followed in 2025 as a gatefold LP in an edition of 500 shown first at that year's Seoul Record Fair; Discogs tags it pop only.

Film is a second career. Korean Wikipedia lists his scores for 숲속의 방 (1992), 무소의 뿔처럼 혼자서 가라 (1995), 불새 (1997), The Cut Runs Deep (2000, with Dalparan), 맛있는 섹스 그리고 사랑 (2003), 사랑하니까, 괜찮아 (2006) and 지금, 이대로가 좋아요 (2009). He was a radio host on KBS 2FM's 음악세계 from 1996 to 1999, hosted Mnet's Soundflex in 2011 and KBS1's 문화 책갈피 in 2013 and 2014, and was a coach on KBS2's Top Band in 2011 and 2012; Berklee Today also notes his work as a judge on that show.

He teaches at Howon University. Berklee Today reported around 2013 that he taught there two days a week; Yonhap said in 2015 that he had taught there for more than twenty years, and Newstomato described him in 2020 as a professor in its practical music department, working from a studio in Seoul's Gangdong district. Berklee Today also describes the pianist Im Mi-jung (Mijung Lim) as a former student of his and other Berklee graduates, though no record credit confirms their lessons. He told Yonhap in 2015 that he would rather be introduced as a musician than as a professor, and that art teaching should not come down to right and wrong answers.

His own accounts place him between jazz and popular song. Berklee Today quotes him telling students who want to play like Hiromi or Brad Mehldau that technique comes more easily to young players than feeling, and says he has them play the blues very slowly and listen to earlier pianists such as Dave Brubeck and Thelonious Monk. Newstomato says he grew up on records by Shin Joong-hyun, Han Dae-soo, Cho Yong-pil, Kim Su-cheol, Kim Chang-wan of Sanulrim, and Choi Sung-won and Jeon In-kwon of Deulgukhwa, and wanted to be in a band from childhood. He is also a film obsessive: he told Yonhap he skipped piano lessons as a child to watch double features, once wrote a piece, "도레미 송", with Jim Jarmusch in mind, and hears from listeners that his music feels like watching images.

The records themselves are quiet and melodic, with piano and keyboards in front, long closing tracks such as "동시상영" (Double Feature, 8:17) on 정원영 5, and a steady line of small thank-you pieces.

How much of this is jazz is a fair question. In favour of a jazz identity: Berklee Today's "straddles jazz and pop" description of his albums; his Berklee training in jazz piano and film scoring; the 1994 Super Band billing; Bugs files 가버린 날들, Mr. Moonlight, Young Mi Robinson and the 2005 band EP as fusion jazz; Discogs gives Mr. Moonlight the style Contemporary Jazz and tags his 1993, 1995, 2010 and 2021 albums as jazz; Apple Music files 사람 under jazz; the jazzpeople double CD Rainbow 2010 Korean Jazz Best 27 includes his "봄타령", and Dong-A Records' 2019 compilation Our Town: Jazz Fusion, Funky Pop & Bossa Gayo Tracks includes "가버린 날들"; and Korean Wikipedia puts him in its jazz pianist category. Against it: the same Wikipedia article opens by calling him a popular-music artist and lists his occupations as composer-singer, lyricist and professor; Bugs files his 2003, 2010 and 2012 albums as pop and ballad and the band's 2009 and 2020 albums as pop rock and blues rock; Apple Music mostly tags him K-pop; Discogs tags 소풍 as pop; and a large part of his output is film and television scoring, K-pop-era session work and singer-songwriter albums. On balance he is best described as a Berklee-trained pianist in the jazz-pop and fusion tradition.