Hachul Song (송하철) is a saxophonist from Incheon, South Korea, who leads the Song Hachul Quartet and has released three studio albums under his own name: Straight Life (2017), Be Yourself (2022) and Resonance (2025). His name is spelled Hachul Song in his own credits, Song Hachul on streaming services and concert listings, and Song Ha Chul on Discogs and on the cover of his first album. Tenor saxophone is his main instrument, and he also plays soprano, alto, clarinet and flute on record.

According to the biography printed with Straight Life and the artist page of the saxophone maker Kim's, he started on clarinet in elementary school and took up jazz saxophone at 15, then finished a basic course of study within a year and entered the Department of Postmodern Music at Kyung Hee University as the youngest student admitted. The artist record kept by the Yeonsu Culture Foundation, which describes him as a jazz saxophonist from Incheon's Yeonsu District, dates his entry to 2008 at age 15, adds a bachelor's degree from Kyung Hee in 2014 and a master's degree from Seokyeong University in 2019, and lists him as a saxophone instructor at the Seoul School of Performing Arts high school in 2019 and 2020. The same record describes his day-to-day work as mostly recording sessions for singers and club performances in Seoul. The ticketing site StagePick lists his birth date as November 2, 1992, which is also the release date of his debut album; no other published source gives a birth date, so the header line gives only the year.

His first recordings came on two albums by the pianist Jeon Yong-jun (spelled Chon Yong Jun on Discogs): Don't Bother Me Anymore (The Open Music, 2014), where he plays tenor saxophone, and Chromatic DNA (2016), where he plays tenor saxophone and flute. Discogs credits him on those two records and on one compilation track. In 2014 he won a prize at the Young Chang Music Competition (영창 뮤직 콩쿨), and the jazz magazine Jazz People named him one of its Rising Stars in 2015 according to the Yeonsu record, Kim's and the Straight Life biography (a 2018 concert listing from Istanbul dates the honor to 2014). Jazz People has named Rising Stars since 2008 from players aged 30 or younger. In the same years he played at the Jarasum International Jazz Festival with the trumpeter Oh Jae-chul (오재철) and his large ensemble (2014), in Jeon Yong-jun's band and with the other 2015 Rising Stars (2015), in the quintet of Jo Yong-won (조용원) in 2016 and the quartet of Kang Hyeon-gyu (강현규) in 2017, and he appeared on EBS Space Gonggam in the episodes built around Oh Jae-chul (2015) and Jeon Yong-jun (2016).

Straight Life came out on November 2, 2017, with seven of his own compositions played by his quartet: Chaesun Yim (임채선) on piano, Dongmin Lee (이동민) on bass and Soojin Suh (서수진) on drums, with Miles Showell mastering at Abbey Road. The streaming service Bugs named it its album of the month for December 2017, and the critic Kim Gwang-hyeon, in a review dated January 3, 2018, heard in it a young player carrying the 1990s young-lion tradition into the 21st century, and heard echoes of Eric Alexander and Benny Green in the swing of "Grand Bleu". In 2017 he also travelled to Amsterdam's Bimhuis with the Jungsu Choi Tiny Orkester, a Korean big band whose English Wikipedia lineup names a Hachul Song as tenor saxophonist.

The quartet's first international outing was the Jazz Korea tour of autumn 2018, organized by Korean consulates and cultural centers in Europe, with dates in Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Warsaw, Rome and Istanbul. At Istanbul's Akbank Sanat on November 20, 2018 it played only his own compositions, and the same listing says the quartet was invited to that year's Jarasum festival. In 2019 he joined the same European tour in the chordless quartet of a Suh Su-jin (서수진), and in 2020 the quartet took part in the online edition, a set later issued as the live EP 2020 Jazz Korea Festival Live at Boomiz. Also in 2020 he recorded a duo set with Ikjun Won, Ikjun Won X Hachul Song Duo Live at Seoul 13.

Between the first and second albums he released three singles in 2018, "May 16th", "Emotional Highs and Lows" and "Signal", and in January 2022 an EP, Emotional Highs And Lows, with the trumpeter Taehoon Hong on one track. Be Yourself followed on May 12, 2022 (nine tracks, all his own compositions), with Chaesun Yim on piano, Inseop Song (송인섭) on bass and Joochan Im (임주찬) on drums; its liner text describes a person who sees himself fading in his relationships with others and decides to begin again. Resonance appeared on April 24, 2025, with the same rhythm section and guests including the guitarist Joon Smith and the group Beatsnap. It was presented at a showcase at Studio Log on June 14, 2025, which was recorded and released as Resonance (Live At The Studio Log) on September 17, 2025. A concert report from the 2025 Gongjicheon Jazz Festa in Chuncheon (October 10, 2025) describes his quartet opening the festival with the title track.

On September 8, 2026 he appeared at EBS Space Gonggam's Dive into Jazz series at the EBS Space Hall, where the broadcaster's program planner Jung Byeong-uk called him a young traditionalist and an heir of straight-ahead jazz. Outside his own quartet he plays alto saxophone in the Ska Jazz Unit, whose second album Make Smile (September 22, 2026) includes a piece he wrote; he is listed in the lineup of the folk-and-jazz quintet SE:UM, which began jamming in 2013; StagePick also lists him in the jazz-funk septet JSFA; and he has played on albums by the duo Beatsnap, the pianist Kim Sung-hwa's trio, the jazz-rap artist O'KOYE and others.

Not published in the material available: a birth date confirmed by a second source, interviews in English, and entries in Wikipedia (as a person), Wikidata or MusicBrainz. Sources also disagree on a few dates, such as the year of the Rising Star selection and the Young Chang prize, and where they do the text above says so.

Akbank Sanat's concert page describes the quartet as drawing on modern jazz trends and the American jazz tradition, with dynamic structures and unexpected transitions, and says he names Sonny Rollins, Branford Marsalis and Joshua Redman among his masters. EBS Space Gonggam's program note describes him as keeping to the sound of jazz's golden age and the bop idiom on his own albums, with a firm tenor tone, clear phrasing and long romantic lines, while his session and band work covers quartet and big-band settings, ska jazz and pop recording.

Resonance is built around personal references. Its liner text names the saxophonist Benny Golson (the opening track is "Theme for Benny"), the painter Edward Hopper (the source of "Hopper Hopper"), whisky ("S.M.S.W." stands for Single Malt Scotch Whisky), the changing seasons and a family photograph. In 2026 he marked the centenary of John Coltrane's birth with a studio performance of "Trane's Blues" for EBS Space Gonggam. The Bugs review of Straight Life compared the playing to that of Benny Green's generation of 1990s straight-ahead players. His single "Mood For Summer" (2024) is described by its label as a ballad single.