Junghyun Cho (조정현) is a South Korean jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player, the founder and music director of a 17-piece big band, The Jazz Ambassadors Orchestra (더재즈앰배서더스오케스트라), and the leader of a first album, Children, released on September 12, 2024. His own release bills him Cho Junghyun, Discogs files him as 조정현 (Jung-Hyun Cho) with the variant Junghyun Cho, the credits of Children print Cho Jung Hyun, and the credits of Lee Yong-seok's 2021 album print Junghyun Cho. On his YouTube channel, "Trumpet Pro Tips" (조프로의 기상나팔), he greets viewers as Jo-Pro (조프로). He is not the ballad singer Cho Jung-hyun (조정현, born 1964), who shares the Hangul name and has several records of his own, nor the recording engineer and the photographer filed under the same name on Discogs.

His birth date, birthplace, schooling and teachers are not published anywhere that could be found. What the record does show is a working Seoul trumpeter. The text released with Children says he has been active since the late 2000s across jazz and Korean popular music, that in clubs and at festivals he has mostly been a leader and sideman in hard bop ensembles, and that he has long done recording and live sessions for leading Korean singers, among them Kim Dong-ryul. The same text says his name can be found in the credits of terrestrial and cable television music programs and of major Korean films; no individual credit is named, so that remains the release text's own claim. The text also counts JSFA's first album of 2009 among the records he has taken part in; no source itemizes his part on it.

His first dated jazz credits are guest turns in 2011. On the first album of the drummer Park Geun-hyuk's band BG Salon, 습관의 발견 (September 2011), the release notes name him as one of four guests, on muted trumpet, and he returned as the guest trumpeter on its second record, 현재의 발견 (October 2015). In 2013 he took the trumpet chair in the jazz-funk band JSFA beside the pianist Jiyoung Lee (이지영) and the bassist Eunchang Choi, and is credited on its second album Season 2: The Return of JSFA!! (December 2013), on the single "Sketchy" (2016) and in a filmed session from February 2014. The bassist Wonsool Lee used him on the ten-track concept album Into the Time (June 2014), and the tango-jazz band La Ventana's single Interlude! (May 2016) is on the list of records the Jazz Avenue column attributes to him, although its Bugs page itemizes no instrumentalists and credits the words of "Little Bird" to a 조정현.

In 2016 he founded The Jazz Ambassadors Orchestra. Korean press, from the daily Segye Ilbo in 2024 to local newspapers announcing its concerts, describes it as a 17-piece big band formed around the trumpeter Cho; the album credits of 2023 call him its music director. The orchestra appears in filmed festival sets at the Jarasum Jazz Festival with a string of visiting singers: a 2016 set with the Danish vocalist Mads Mathias, a 2017 set with the English singer and pianist Anthony Strong, whose posted line-up names Cho as lead trumpet, and the 15th festival's Jazz Island concert with the American singer Curtis Stigers on October 12, 2018. A full set filmed at the Goyang summer jazz concert on July 1, 2022 shows the band playing standards ("Sing, Sing, Sing", "Mambo Inn", "Come Fly With Me", "Manteca") with the vocalists 이지민 and 윤덕현, the percussionist Kim Hyun-jun and the flutist 이규재.

The orchestra's best-documented project is its work on the music of the Nexon online game Mabinogi. On October 9, 2023 it played "Jarasum Jazz x Mabinogi", arranged by eight arrangers, on the main stage of the 20th Jarasum festival, with the art director Wonsool Lee; a live recording of the set came out on December 7, 2023. An extended version with Jung Dong-hwan, the pianist of the band Melomance, followed at LG Arts Center Seoul on May 1, 2024, and the orchestra played the program again at Gangdong Art Center on November 2, 2024. On October 31, 2024 it joined the musical-theater singer Jung Sun-ah at the Bucheon Arts Center in a program of George Gershwin and standards.

Between these projects he kept up a sideman career. He is credited on trumpet on the 2017 album 가물거리는 세상 by the bassist Seo Young-do's Seo Young Do Electric Ensemble (tracks A1 and A4) and on trumpet and flugelhorn on the saxophonist Lee Yong-seok's second album The New Old One (March 2021), recorded on November 6 and 12, 2020 at Eum Sound Studio in Seoul. In December 2025 he appeared on three tracks of the "Jazz in Black Desert" side of the three-LP set Black Desert (10th Anniversary), with the pianist Mijung Lim, the bassist Daeho Kim, the drummer Lee Do-heon and Lee Yong-seok. Discogs also files session credits under his name on records by Kim Dong-ryul (2011 and 2020), Super Junior (2012), the vocal group The Barberettes (2014, 2016, 2018) and Yukika (2023).

Children was made with a band of nine and marketed by Gatefor Music & Art. The Jazz Avenue column on September 2024's new releases listed it as a full-length album, with a cast drawn from the Korean jazz and pop scenes, and the jazz newsletter Jazz Docent named it in February 2025 among the soft, easy records of 2024 that feel bright and cheerful. A 17-minute video feature on the channel 엘프TV, promoting the album, was posted on January 17, 2025. On April 25, 2026 he was the flugelhorn soloist in Chuck Mangione's "Children of Sanchez" at the tenth regular concert of the Korean Trumpet Orchestra under the conductor 김우일 at KBS Hall in Yeouido; a Newspim announcement called him the jazz trumpeter taking the solo.

He is active. His place of birth is not published, and he is counted as South Korean by work: the records, club and festival sets and concerts above place him in Seoul and at Korean festivals from 2011 to 2026.

No review or interview describing his playing in his own words was found, so this section sticks to the release text and the recordings.

The release text for Children names hard bop as the usual language of the ensembles he has led or played in, and the album itself ranges wider. It runs through a medium swing ("Ride or Die", billed 찐친 in Korean, with trumpet and tenor saxophone in unison), a bossa nova on flugelhorn ("Shanying's Dance", written for his wife), a title piece in the New Orleans style with cornet, clarinet, trombone and ragtime piano, a minor-key bossa nova with harmon mute ("Farewell"), a samba with Brazilian percussion ("Lucky Day Parade"), a blues shuffle with plunger mute and two saxophones ("Daddies' Small Talks"), a reggae-flavored piece built on pentatonic melodies ("Every Dog Has His Day") and a closing duet of trumpet and gospel piano ("My Confession"). The release text says he wanted melodies and improvisation that sit easily with listeners who are not jazz specialists.

Filmed sets show the hard bop side: his quintet with Lee Yong-seok on tenor saxophone playing "Seven Steps to Heaven" at the Seoul club Once in a Bluemoon (posted April 2016) and Blue Mitchell's "Fungii Mama". With the big band his repertoire runs from Gershwin to Latin numbers such as "Mambo Inn" and "Manteca". Who shaped his style is not documented.