Hogyu Hwang (황호규) is a South Korean bassist who plays double bass and electric bass. His own jazz albums bill him as Hogyu "Stiger" Hwang, and with that first record as a leader, Straight, No Chaser (2017), he won the Best Jazz & Crossover Performance prize at the 15th Korean Music Awards in 2018. The nickname Stiger, according to the Korean release notes for the album, is a blend of the English words tiger and star that he picked up as a student abroad. Discogs files his releases under Hogyu Hwang, gives 황호규 as his real name, and keeps a second entry under the Hangul spelling that holds his pop session credits; one release, the 2021 SMTown winter album, appears in both lists, which shows they are the same man.

No source found gives his birth date or birthplace. Berklee describes him as a native of South Korea who won several major scholarships there, and W Korea described him in May 2026 as a musician in his forties. Where he lives now is not stated anywhere. He told W Korea that he left Korea to study in 2002 and has played in many American and European cities, Billboard Live Taipei called his playing that of an authentic New York musician, and he has also worked in Seoul with the pianist Cho Yoon-seung and others.

Berklee College of Music lists him as a 2007 graduate. A Berklee notice from his Monk Institute years says he had toured in Spain, Poland, Germany, France, Ecuador and Japan, played at the Blue Note, Iridium and Jazz Standard in New York, and performed with JoAnne Brackeen, Terri Lyne Carrington, Dave Douglas, Donald Harrison, Jimmy Heath and Joe Lovano. The early recordings that Discogs credits to a Hogyu Hwang on bass fit that student period: the Berklee Concert Jazz Orchestra's The XM Radio Sessions (2005, directed by Greg Hopkins), the Alex Terrier Quintet's Stop Requested (Aphrodite Records, France, 2007, which Discogs lists among his groups) and Carrington's More to Say ... (Real Life Story: NextGen) (2009). Discogs also gives him credits on a 2004 Vietnamese album by the guitarist Quyen Thien Dac, Mike Tucker's self-released Collage (2005) and the Russian vocalist Alexandra Sasha Samsonova's Yes, No, May Be So (2008).

From 2009 to 2011 he was a member of the eighth class of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, now the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz, with the saxophonist Godwin Louis, the trumpeter Billy Buss, the pianist Victor Gould, Matt Marantz and Nick Falk. Berklee announced the institute's new sextet, with Hwang on bass, in a notice for a Boston concert at Cafe 939 before the group left to study in New Orleans with Terence Blanchard, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and others. The Korean release notes for his debut say the institute takes only seven players every two years and that he worked with masters including Herbie Hancock, Joe Lovano, Hal Crook and Carrington.

Back in the Korean scene, he told W Korea he first played the Seoul Jazz Festival around 2013 and has appeared there several times with the pianist Song Young-joo, the singer Sunwoo Jung-a, Cho Yoon-seung and the singer-songwriter Lucid Fall. A 2021 Jeonbuk Ilbo notice for a Jeonju concert described him as the leader of the Hwang Ho-kyu Quartet and as a bassist who had worked on many pop albums, naming Sumi Jo, Kim Dong-ryul, Lee Sora, Yoon Jong-shin and Lucid Fall. On record he is the bassist on the singer Woongsan's Temptation (Pony Canyon, Japan, August 2015, credited on bass) and, on Discogs, on the guitarist Jack Lee's Pray (Truspace, 2016) and one track of Jeff "Tain" Watts's Blue, Vol. 2 (Dark Key Music, October 2016), where he is credited on double bass on "14E".

Straight, No Chaser, released on June 8, 2017 on Blue Room Music, is his debut as a leader. The quartet is the drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, the pianist David Kikoski and the guitarist Adam Rogers, and they recorded in Watts's home studio with the engineer David Kowalski, playing together in one room to get the feel of an older record. Hwang plays a studio bass of modest quality because of a supply problem on the day, which the Korean release notes say gives his tone a New Orleans flavour; the critic Hwang Deok-ho is quoted there as saying the instrument added atmosphere. The eight tracks split into four originals ("Beyond", "Beautiful Mind", "Memories of the Desert" and "The Resistant") and four standards: Thelonious Monk's "Straight, No Chaser" and "Four in One", John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" and "Will You Still Be Mine". The Bugs review by Kim Gwang-hyeon says the originals carry his experience of the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster, army service and life abroad, and that he arranged the title tune while at the Monk Institute. Bugs named it its jazz album of the month for July 2017, the Korean notes quote Herbie Hancock praising the arrangements, and the Korean Music Awards chose it for the 2018 performance prize, in the same year that the jazz album prize went to the Lee Ji-yeun Contemporary Jazz Orchestra's Feather, Dream Drop.

He has led the band on record twice more. Stiger Live!: Hogyu "Stiger" Hwang Quartet Live at JCC Art Center (Blue Room Music, December 21, 2021) is a two disc, eight track set of 93 minutes, with Godwin Louis on saxophone, Victor Gould on piano and Jonathan Barber on drums; Discogs credits him as composer of "Dear Audience", "Beautiful Mind", "Beyond" and "Memories of the Desert", and Hwang Deok-ho wrote the liner notes. Jesus Loves Me (Blue Room Music Korea, December 22, 2023), billed to the Hogyu Hwang Trio, is a set of nine hymns, among them "How Great Thou Art" and "All People That on Earth Do Dwell", played with the saxophonist John Ellis and the drummer Jongkuk Kim (both named on the sleeve). He is also the bassist on Louis's Global (2019) and Psalms and Proverbs (2024), which came out on the same label alongside his own records.

With Cho Yoon-seung he formed the core of the IJDS Quintet, which played the International Jazz Day concert in Seoul on April 30, 2022 with the saxophonist Shin Myung-sup, the drummer Shin Dong-jin and the Dutch trumpeter Joep van Rhijn. The live album (Blue Room Music, December 20, 2022) includes the title piece "Nemethis", "Prelude for Ukraine", a Cho and Hwang duo called "Syncretism" and a reworking of the 1926 song "Celebrating Death". He plays bass on the soprano Sumi Jo's In Love (Warner Music Korea, December 2022) in a quartet with Song Young-joo on a song she arranged, and appears on the Korean pop albums of Lee Jin-ah, Young Tak and Heize and on a 2016 single by Onew and Lee Jin-ah. In October 2026 he was announced as the bassist in the pianist Gee Hye Lee's quintet for Korean dates in Seoul, Daegu and Ulsan.

The largest part of his recent public profile is the SM Jazz Trio, formed inside SM Entertainment's classical and jazz label SM Classics with the pianist Yohan Kim and the drummer Jonggook Kim. It grew out of a jazz version of H.O.T.'s "The Promise", which Hwang arranged and played with Yohan Kim in November 2021 (Discogs credits both men as co-arrangers of that track in the SMTown winter album, with Kim on piano), and has since released jazz versions of aespa's "Supernova" (August 30, 2024) and "11:11" (March 14, 2025), the original "Prometheus" (March 21, 2025) and the album PINK NOTE (November 10, 2025), which reworks songs by BoA, EXO, Girls' Generation and NCT Dream. W Korea reported in May 2026 that the trio was due at that year's Seoul Jazz Festival, with the drummer Taehyun Kim standing in for Jonggook Kim because of a Blue Note project, and that it planned a Tokyo date in June and an album of original music in the second half of the year. In the same interview Hwang contrasts session work, which asks for machine-like accuracy within a fixed frame, with jazz, where once the melody is stated the players talk to each other freely.

No interview in which he names his influences was found, so this section sticks to what the records and the release notes show.

His leader records sit in the mainstream of acoustic jazz: four originals and four Monk and Coltrane era standards on Straight, No Chaser, played by a New York rhythm section and recorded live in the room, and a quartet date with saxophone, piano and drums on Stiger Live!. The Korean press notes emphasize arrangement and interplay between the players, and his own arrangements date from his student years at the Monk Institute. He also plays jazz arrangements of hymns on Jesus Loves Me and of K-pop songs with the SM Jazz Trio.

His session credits run well beyond jazz. Discogs files his work with Lee Jin-ah, Onew, Young Tak and Heize under pop, and SMTown's winter albums are K-pop collections. These credits are a real part of his working life in Korea, but his leader albums, his award, his Monk Institute training and his sideman work for Carrington, Watts and Godwin Louis are all jazz, and that is the identity this profile follows.