Daeho Kim (김대호) is a South Korean jazz bassist who worked for about fifteen years as a sideman, arranger and producer on the Korean scene before releasing his first album under his own name, Tough Life, on November 20, 2025. The record was made with the American drummer Lewis Nash. The release text on the Korean streaming service Bugs says he appeared on the scene around 2010 and had worked mostly as a sideman since, apart from a project band called Acousticology that he joined briefly in 2015. Kyunghyang Sports described him in July 2026 as a bassist who had been at the center of Korean jazz for more than fifteen years. His birth date, birthplace and schooling are not published in any source found, so the account below begins with his recordings.

The earliest recordings that can be tied to him are with the pianist Chon Yong Jun (Jeon Yong-jun). Discogs credits a Kim Dae Ho on double bass on Don't Bother Me Anymore (The Open Music, 2014), with Song Ha Chul on tenor saxophone and Kim Young Jin on drums, and on electric bass on Chromatic DNA (weplayjazz, 2016), with Ha Beom Seok on electric guitar. The spelling differs from his other credits, but the same drummer and guitarist stand beside him on two other records, Radical Paradise and the jazz version of Jennie's "You & Me", and the saxophonist Song Ha Chul is the tenor player profiled on JazzProfiles.com as Hachul Song.

His longest documented partnership is with the vocalist and pianist Maria Kim. Discogs lists him on bass on four of her albums: Those Sentimental Things (Mirrorball Jazz World and Weplayjazz, 2015, recorded at Studio Nine in Seoul, with the saxophonist Jeeseok Kim, the guitarist Jinwoo Ok and the drummer Kim Min-chan), I Want To Be Happy (2018, with the singer Sung Huh), Fotografia (2019, a Brazilian program) and Misty Blue (2024, with the trumpeter and singer Benny Benack III as a guest). He is also credited, together with Maria Kim, as arranger of one track on her string album With Strings: Dream of You (2021, LP 2022), although the bass chair on that record is credited to someone else. Jeeseok Kim, who plays saxophone on three of those four records, is also the saxophonist on his own album, and the Bugs release text calls him a partner of long standing.

In 2016 he played bass on tracks 1, 4, 7, 8 and 11 of Radical Paradise (Private Curve, VDCD-6638, released October 12, 2016), the album of the singer-songwriter Echae Kang (강이채), a record Discogs files under jazz, rock and pop. A Discogs entry billed in Hangul as 김대호 carries that credit. Wikipedia's credits for the jazz version of the K-pop singer Jennie's "You & Me", adapted from Melon and YouTube descriptions and tied to a live clip released on October 11, 2023, list a rhythm section of Youngjin Kim on drums, Daeho Kim on bass, Beomseok Ha on guitar and Yongjun Jeong on piano, the same four players, under slightly different romanizations, as Chon Yong Jun's quartet. In a December 2025 announcement of Mihyang Moon's Christmas tour, the Korean outlet K Spirit says he had played with the vocalist Kurt Elling and with V of BTS.

He is a regular bassist for the pianist Mijung Lim. The Sori-e Naite Music Company, which released her albums, names the bassist 김대호 as one of her long-standing partners on Composure (2019) and says on its Flow (2022) page, for her first piano trio record, that he has worked with her since that fourth album. Discogs also credits a Daeho Kim on contrabass, with Mijung Lim on piano, on three tracks of the "Jazz In Black Desert" side of Black Desert (10th Anniversary) (Black Screen Records, 2025), a vinyl set of music from the video game: "Balenos 42nd Street", "Mediahn Panorama" and "Sunday In Serendia".

With the vocalist Mihyang Moon he worked as a producer as well as a player. The CJ Cultural Foundation, in its March 2024 entry for her debut I Wished On The Moon, calls him a pillar of the Korean jazz scene, long loved as a player and arranger, and names him as the album's co-producer. For her EP EVERMOON (February 16, 2025) the credits on the label's page read producers Daeho Kim and Mihyang Moon, with all arrangements by him, and list him on bass. On May 12, 2024 YAGI Studio in Seoul presented him as the leader of an afternoon concert in its Eungok Village series, with Mihyang Moon as the vocalist, announcing him as a jazz bassist active in Korea and abroad. In December 2025 he was the bassist of her quintet for a Christmas tour of four cities, according to K Spirit, and an OhmyNews report on the Jarasum Jazz Festival of October 2026 describes him and Moon improvising with an artificial-intelligence pianist named Scat in the festival's Jazz AI Lounge.

Tough Life was recorded on July 30, 2025 at Glori Again Studio and mixed and mastered by Mike Marciano at System Two Studio in Brooklyn. The Bugs release text says the first spark was his meeting with Lewis Nash, and it describes the band as the saxophonist Jeeseok Kim, the trumpeter Joep van Rhijn and the pianist Jaehun Kang, who play alongside Kim and Nash. It holds five originals and four standards, with an alternate take of one original added at the end. In the label's account the title piece came from the thought of buying a beer at a convenience store on the way home after a hard day. A year-end newsletter by the Korean jazz writer who publishes as Jazz Docent named him among the players who left the most notable records of 2025 as a sideman, a producer and a leader, and heard straight-ahead jazz with the hard-bop nostalgia of the 1960s. Park Jun-woo, secretary-general of the Korean Popular Music Awards, listed the album among his picks of the year in a December 2025 survey of fourteen critics published by Newsis.

The festival and television appearances followed. Kyunghyang Sports reported on July 1, 2026 that the 23rd Jarasum Jazz Festival, held October 9 to 11, had put his project Daeho Kim Tough Life in its first lineup, promising straight-ahead bebop and blues over a weighty walking bass. On October 14, 2026 the EBS program Space Gonggam broadcast the Lewis Nash Trio with him on bass and Jaehun Kang on piano, a set announced as a tribute to Oscar Peterson, alongside a second trio led by the bassist Eddie Gómez. The previews named "You Look Good to Me", "Cubano Chant" and "Hymn to Freedom" as the planned repertoire.

He has not named his influences in anything found, so this section sticks to what listeners and his own label's text say.

Kyunghyang Sports describes his project as straight-ahead bebop and blues with a heavy walking bass. The Jazz Docent newsletter says the album shows the essence of straight-ahead jazz, recalls the pianist Jaehun Kang's own trio record Mean What You Say, and that the added saxophone and trumpet bring the hard-bop mood of the 1960s. Park Jun-woo wrote that the first album resembles his playing: unforced, delicate, grounded and elegant. The credits show an approach built around a horn quartet of trumpet, saxophone, piano and drums for the first four tracks, and a piano trio for tracks 5 to 9. The cover shows an upright bass, and his earlier credits add electric bass on Chromatic DNA and a jazz-rock setting on Radical Paradise.

His other work spans jazz singing, Brazilian songs, K-pop arrangements and a video-game soundtrack, but the Korean press and his own album place him in mainstream jazz.