Hong Gie Kim (김홍기) is a South Korean jazz drummer, composer and bandleader, born in Seoul in 1980 according to his artist page at the drum maker Canopus, and a full-time professor of practical music at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. Korean releases and press print his name as Kim Hong-gi, while his own albums, Apple Music and Canopus bill him as Hong Gie Kim; the CultureHub project page writes Hong-Gie Kim and a few listings Honggie Kim. They are one musician: the Korean streaming service Bugs files his Dutch trio album, his funk-electronic album and his 2025 album under a single artist page for 김홍기, and its biography there calls him a full-time SeoulArts professor and a drummer with three albums as a leader. His exact birth date, the years of his studies and the names of his teachers have not been published.

Where he studied is only partly documented. A 2017 concert notice on the news site Newdaily says he has a bachelor's degree from the Amsterdam Conservatory and a master's from ArtEZ in the Netherlands, and his Canopus page says that after the Amsterdam Conservatory he moved to New York and studied at SUNY Purchase College on a full scholarship. Neither gives years, and they do not say in which order the studies came. The Korean release notes for his first album describe him as a working musician who spent several years in the Netherlands before returning to Korea.

That first record, Hong Gie Kim & the European Connection (Maxanter Records, 2009), is a piano trio album with the Dutch pianist Rob van Bavel and the bassist Marius Beets, whose names are printed on the sleeve. It has ten tracks and runs about 58 minutes, and it mixes pieces by other writers, among them Jeremy Pelt, Johnny Mandel, Steve Gray, Enrico Pieranunzi, Chano Dominguez and Sting, with two by Van Bavel, one by Kim ("Stair of Heaven") and one by Hyun Jin Song ("A Jungle in the Cloud"). The Korean edition (Digital Records, dated June 25, 2010 on Bugs) is introduced with quotations from a review at MMJAZZ and from the drummer John Riley, who calls the programme elegant, intelligent and gently romantic. Its notes add that Kim arranged and produced all but two of the ten pieces and plays for the balance of the trio rather than the display of the drum kit, and they say it was the first record by a Korean jazz drummer to reach the top ten of a Dutch jazz chart on release, which is the label's claim.

By the time the Korean edition appeared he was back in Korea, working with leading Korean jazz musicians and, according to the label, teaching at Soongsil University and Baekseok University. The 2017 Newdaily notice lists his teaching at Baekseok Arts University, the Seoul Institute of the Arts, Baekseok University and Dankook University, and the Seoul Institute of the Arts' own program history records his appointment as a full-time professor in March 2019.

Much of his documented work is as a sideman in Seoul. He is the drummer billed when the bassist Wonsool Lee's group played Point of Contact for EBS Space on April 18, 2012, with the pianist Han Chung-wan in the line-up. Both Newdaily and Canopus list him on that album, which won Best Jazz & Crossover Jazz Album at the 10th Korean Music Awards in February 2013 (Canopus words it as a Korea Jazz Award). Canopus and Newdaily also say that Jazz People magazine's readers' poll nominated him as best jazz drummer in Korea in the years 2013 to 2015, and Newdaily adds that he played on the drums for the act Dongbangbaksa (동방박사), which took grand prizes at the 2016 Jeonju Sori Festival's Frontier programme and the 2016 Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture's Noreummachi programme. The same notice lists the Penang Island, Hong Kong International, Beishan, Jarasum, Seoul Jazz, Daegu and Ulsan jazz festivals among the festivals he has played.

Credits for other Seoul leaders run through the 2010s and 2020s. Bugs names him as the drummer on Souplus 2nd (March 7, 2012), the second album of the group led by the bassist Hocheol Kim. The trombonist and bassist Joonghwa Jung credits Kim Hong-gi on drums on four records for HUKS Music: Moon Dance (December 14, 2016, with the bassist Eun-chang Choi), 아버지 (Father, 2019), 애원 (To Be with You, 2020) and 가을이 오는 소리 (Sounds of Autumn, 2021). Those credits give only the name 김홍기 and the instrument. For the pianist Boomi's music-theatre company he is the drummer, introduced as a Seoul Institute of the Arts professor, in the July 2, 2022 restaging of JOSEON at the Bupyeong Arts Center, and Boomi's profile also places him in Jemulpo Blues (2024).

His own band since the middle of the 2010s is HG Funktronic (HG FunkTronic), a funk, electronic and jazz group. HG Funktronic - Ready For Change (Caffeine Music, March 6, 2015) is the album he made six years after his first; the Bugs notes say it took about two years to prepare and that he arranged, sequenced and narrated it himself. It runs from a drum-collage opener, "Collectivity", through a vocoder piece, a drum-and-bass jungle beat, a title track with a rapper ("Way Up East", featuring A-Tlas) and a vocal feature ("목적지를 향해 내달리는", featuring Choi Jeong), to a modern-jazz piece ("Corner House"), a funk piece ("Turn Up") and a closing "Road Trip". Bugs files it under electronic, R&B and soul, jazz and rap. A newspaper preview in December 2022 says he formed HG Funktronic in 2016 as a seven-member electronic jazz ensemble. The single "How To Be Together" (Music Paradiso, November 28, 2017) credits him on drums with the bassist Ahn Byeong-cheol (안병철), the trumpeter Brian Shin, the saxophonist Hyunpill Shin (신현필) and the keyboardist Kim Ha-yang (김하양). The band is listed at the 2022 Seoul Forest Jazz Festival and the September 2023 Jeonju Jazz Festival on the Seoul Institute of the Arts' program history page, and on December 28, 2022 it played the matinee "Funky All Right" with the singer Horan at the Namdong Sorae Art Hall in Incheon. A 2021 album billed to Kim Hong-gi and Friends, That Real Funky Story, is listed on Bugs as jazz and as Stellive Vol. 13.

In November 2019 he returned to the Dutch trio with the single "The Chromatic Corner" (LEEWAY Music & Media, November 20, 2019), recorded with Van Bavel and Beets about ten years after their first meeting, with Kim producing and arranging. The release notes describe a drum-forward "hybrid" approach and add that he is a Zildjian international artist and a Canopus drums and Regal Tip sticks artist.

His latest record is Atmosphere: Seven Steps to Island (released October 22, 2025). He travelled to Los Angeles on January 5, 2025 for the CultureHub Global Residency, a project its notes say was supported by the Korean government, the Seoul Institute of the Arts, CultureHub and the California Institute of the Arts, and recorded seven pieces with the Balinese music master I Nyoman Wenten, the multi-instrumentalist Vinny Golia and the cornetist and keyboardist Jonathon Stearns at CalArts' R.O.D Studio on January 15, 2025, in the weeks of the Los Angeles wildfires. He composed, arranged and produced all of it and mixed and mastered it in Korea with Ho-Jung Kang. CultureHub calls it its first album.

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

On the Dutch trio record, the Korean notes stress balance and interplay: a drummer who chooses to shape the trio's conversation rather than put the kit in front, with a repertoire taken from writers of several countries and arranged by him. The 2019 single turns that around and puts the drums in front. His Bugs biography describes drumming that moves between funk, jazz, electronic music and Korean traditional music (gugak), and calls him a leader as well as a sideman, and the HG Funktronic records bear that out: Ready For Change sits between jazz, electronic music, R&B and rap, which is why Bugs files it under several genres rather than under jazz alone.

Seven Steps to Island goes furthest from the trio. By its own notes the project set out to hold a dialogue between Balinese gamelan, traditional Korean rhythms and jazz, with Kim and Wenten sharing the percussion: Kim plays drums, gangsa pemade and modular synthesizer, Wenten plays gangsa pemade, reong and kendang, and Golia's woodwinds and gong gede and Stearns's cornet and keys sit above and under them. The Jazz Docent newsletter hears a work driven by percussion, notable for sequences, layering and improvisation, in which the Southeast Asian instruments play alongside the drums.