Kang Dae-gwan (강대관) was a South Korean jazz trumpeter, counted among the first generation of Korean jazz musicians, who passed away on July 21, 2017. Two newspaper obituaries, in the Kyunghyang Shinmun and on Edaily, both published on July 23, 2017, give his age as 83 and the cause as a chronic illness, and both credit him with popularizing modern jazz trumpet in Korea. No source found gives his birth date or birthplace, so this profile gives neither. His name is also written Kang Dae Kwan, which is how Discogs files his own records, and Kang Dae-kwan.

The obituaries say he graduated from Haedong High School in Busan and from Dongguk University, and that he took up the trumpet in the first year of middle school, when he joined a school band. After a spell in a Marine Corps military band he moved to Seoul and began his full-time jazz career with the US Eighth Army show troupe, the stage circuit for the American military. Work on that circuit shrank during the Vietnam War. In 1968, on the recommendation of the bandleader Lee Bong-jo (이봉조), he joined the TBC orchestra when the broadcaster's band was founded. He later worked with the Jigu Records studio band and with the KBS orchestra, led by Kim Kang-seop (김강섭), and played nightclubs as well, because broadcast work alone did not pay enough. The 1974 oil shock closed many clubs, and the Kyunghyang says he once burned his scores and records and thought of giving up music. He kept giving concerts into his seventies and retired in 2009.

His best-known recording is not under his own name. In 1978 the arranger Lee Pan-geun (이판근) gathered a quintet at a studio in Majang-dong, Seoul, with Kang on trumpet, Kim Soo-yeol (김수열) on saxophone, Son Soo-gil (손수길) on piano, Lee Soo-young (이수영) on bass and Choi Se-jin on drums. Tenasia counts Kang with Kim Soo-yeol and Choi among the first-generation Korean jazz musicians. The album came out in February 1979 on the Dai Han label as 재즈로 들어본 우리 가요 민요 팝송, Korean folk songs, pop songs and standards played as jazz, and it was largely forgotten until the Beatball label reissued it in October 2013 as Lee Pan-geun & The Korean Jazz Quintet '78. Tenasia's headline asked whether it was the first Korean modern jazz album, and Choi and others thought it might be. A vinyl edition followed in 2015 and a 40th anniversary edition in 2018, and the 2018 release credits him as Kang Dae-gwan.

Discogs lists two records under his name. 트럼펱 왕 ("The Trumpet King", Dai Han ORG-080, 1980) is a 16 track LP of well-known melodies, among them "Aloha Oe", "Lorelei" and "Annie Laurie", and Discogs files it under Pop. The second is a CD marking his 70th birthday, 고희 헌정 라이브 앨범, marked not for sale on the back cover and undated on Discogs. It opens with the Shin Kwan-woong (신관웅) Big Band and gives him a solo feature on "I Remember Clifford", two numbers with a Dixieland band ("When the Saints Go Marching In" and "Bill Bailey"), and a closing jam on "Now's the Time" with Kim Soo-yeol, Lee Dong-ki, Hong Duck-pyo, Lee Jung-sik, Shin, Park Sung-yeon and Malo (말로). He is also credited on trumpet, beside Kim In Seop, on Disco Club Live Vol. 1 (Hyundai Records, 1981), a disco LP arranged by 왕준기, and a 1982 album by the singer 윤세원 on HKR lists him with a second trumpeter, 김이석, in its sleeve credits.

In 2010 he became the central figure of Bravo! Jazz Life (브라보! 재즈 라이프), a documentary by the jazz critic Nam Mu-seong (남무성), released on December 16, 2010 and chosen for the competition section of the Jecheon International Music & Film Festival. Its story begins when the research lab of Lee Pan-geun faces demolition and his old bandmates travel to Bonghwa, in North Gyeongsang, to visit a retired Kang. The Seoul Shinmun, previewing the film in July 2010, listed him among the first-generation players in its cast and tied a retirement concert he had given about a year earlier to badly damaged teeth. In January 2011 the Sports Hankook, profiling the pianist Shin Kwan-woong as he closed his Moon Glow jazz club in Hongdae, named Kang, then 78, among the veterans of the documentary and described him as white-bearded and wearing a bucket hat.

What is not known is considerable. No source found gives his birth date, birthplace or family, who taught him, the years he spent with each orchestra, or any recording under his own name after 1980 other than the undated tribute CD. No interview in which he speaks for himself was found.

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

The obituaries place him in modern jazz trumpet and credit him with popularizing it in Korea. The 1978 quintet record is filed by Discogs under Free Jazz, Post Bop, Jazz-Funk and Modal, and its reissue label describes an opening "Arirang" that moves from a spiritual introduction into jazz-funk, so on that date he is a trumpeter in a modal, funk-edged quintet playing Korean folk melodies beside "Rainy Night in Georgia", "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise" and "My Favorite Things". The tribute CD shows two other sides: a ballad feature on "I Remember Clifford", the Clifford Brown tribute, and Dixieland standards with a traditional band. His 1980 LP and his section work on disco and pop records belong to the studio and broadcast side of his career that the obituaries describe.