Kim Chaek (김책) is a South Korean drummer, born in 1978, who plays free improvisation and mainstream jazz and is also a scholar of music. He has a bachelor's degree in Korean traditional music theory and a master's in anthropology, and has taught jazz history, jazz orchestration and jazz drums at Korean universities. He is best known for The Methodologies (2009), a duo album with the multi-instrumentalist and producer Jung Jae-il (정재일) that won the Korean Music Awards prize for Best Jazz & Crossover Performance in 2010. Only his birth year is published; his birth date and birthplace are not.

His name. The Hangul 김책 is also the name of a North Korean general (1903 to 1951) and of places and a university named after him; none of that has anything to do with this drummer. His own releases print his name in more than one way. Kim Chaek is the form on Discogs, on the 2020 LP Self Ethnography (presented by his own imprint, Kim Chaek Music) and in the Korean Cultural Center New York's 2018 concert listing. The 2015 CD of The South Korean Rhythm Kings credits the drummer as Chaek Kim, and Apple Music files his 2017 and 2018 albums under Chaek Kim. The 2019 album's credit line and the 2020 digital editions of The Methodologies and '나'의 발견 give Check Kim, and one Apple Music storefront prints 김첵. It is the same musician in every case, and this profile uses Kim Chaek.

Early years and study. The release text for The Methodologies says he began on piano, mandolin and guitar as a small child, went to New York as a teenager for formal lessons and many jam sessions, and then, thinking about his own musical identity, turned to the study of Korean traditional music. Korean Wikipedia lists a bachelor's degree in Korean traditional music theory from Pusan National University's College of Arts, a master's degree in anthropology from Seoul National University's College of Social Sciences, and completed doctoral coursework in music education at Seoul National University's College of Education. The 2009 text has him in the anthropology graduate school at Seoul National University, researching improvisation, musical colonialism and the subcultures of urban music; a 2012 release text gives Adelphi University and music anthropology, and says he was lecturing at Soongsil University, Daegu Arts University and Baekseok University. Korean Wikipedia calls him a university professor, without naming the institution, and lists a 2016 prize from the Korean Society for Music Education for an outstanding paper by a next-generation scholar.

The One Night Trio and The Methodologies. His earliest recording on record is the One Night Trio session. On the night of July 2 into July 3, 2005, he, the bassist Park Hyun-jun (박현준) and the guitarist Yang Yun-il (양윤일) recorded in one take, with no overdubbing, at a Hongdae venue called 무경계팽창에너지 (Mugyeonggye Paengchang Energy), with Kim Nam-yun of the rock band 3호선 버터플라이 at the controls. The release text says Kim Chaek had been close to Park for about ten years, that Park had come out of the bands H2O and Pipi Long Stocking, and that the trio began when Kim proposed playing together. The One Night Trio (원 나잇 트리오) came out on Mirrorball Music on March 28, 2006, with originals by Yang, two Bill Frisell pieces, "My Funny Valentine" and short free-improvisation interludes. A drummer credited as 김책 also appears as a session player on Pipi Long Stocking's 1997 album 3th - 원 웨이 티켓, whose composer is a Park Hyun-Joon; the Hangul matches, but the Discogs listing does not tell the two apart, so it is shown only as a possible earlier credit.

The Methodologies followed on October 28, 2009, on the contemporary-music label Audioguy. The release text says the two men had enjoyed free improvisation together in a sculptor friend's studio before the label recorded them. It runs 48 minutes and has fourteen tracks, six of them short interludes, with titles such as "Alles goed? - Capturing the Moment", "Noord zee - Lied voor Ruben en Amber" and "Windmill 2 - Sweet Night, Sweet Dream". The text quotes Kim joking that music is one and only the subcultures differ. At the seventh Korean Music Awards, held at the Platoon Kunsthalle in Seoul on March 30, 2010, Kim Chaek and Jung Jae-il won Best Jazz & Crossover Performance (최우수 재즈 & 크로스오버 연주). Korean Wikipedia lists Park Jin-young Trio's Graceful River (2010) among his albums as well; the release text does not name the drummer.

2012 to 2015. In February 2012 he played drums in the live quartet recording Reverberation (잔향) led by the bassist Kim Changhyun, with the guitarists Jean Oh (Oh Jeong-su, 오정수) and Hyuck Bang (방혁); the Audioguy release followed on August 7, 2012. On October 22, 2012 Audioguy issued '나'의 발견 (roughly, Discovery of the Self), a duo with Jean Oh that the release text says was improvised in about half a day with no ideas decided beforehand; Bugs files it as free jazz. When the nominees for the tenth Korean Music Awards were announced on January 29, 2013, '나'의 발견 was one of five nominees for Best Jazz & Crossover Performance, alongside Kim Changhyun's Reverberation; the prize went to the saxophonist Kang Tae-hwan for Sorefa (소래화). The 2009 text also lists session work with Park Jae-chun, the Heo Dae-wook Trio, a Kye Su-jeong ensemble, Kang Tae-hwan, Kim Changhyun, the singer Sunny Kim (써니킴), Park Chang-su, Seo Young-do and Yang Yun-il, and an ensemble under his own name; those are the bio's claims and are not matched here to individual releases. Korean Wikipedia also lists a 2014 release titled 옥스포드풍의 나례(儺禮) / flying signifier : no museum piece, which has no release record to read.

In 2015 he was the drummer of The South Korean Rhythm Kings, a free-improvisation quartet with the tenor saxophonist Kim Oki, the double bassist Song Nam Hyun and the vocalist Pyo Jin-ho (표진호). Their CD 뿌린대로 거두리 (roughly, As You Sow, So Shall You Reap), recorded at the Cactus studio in Seoul in 2015 and issued by Mirrorball Music, has thirteen titles drawn from the farming year, from rice planting to harvest, and its note says the music was made through free improvisation with almost nothing planned. The publishing line on that CD reads Kimchaekmusicpublishing, his own imprint.

2017 to 2020. The Reflexive Dialogues (Music&New, January 5, 2017) is a live duo record with the jazz guitarist Kim Seong-eun (김성은), taken from about a year of monthly shows at the Seoul venue Mudaeruk (무대륙); the text calls it his third duo album and says the performances were not planned as a recording. On January 19, 2018 he played a gayageum and jazz-drums duet with the gayageum player Park Kyungso (박경소) at Rockwood Music Hall in New York, as listed by the Korean Cultural Center New York, and the pair recorded 산조, 문묘제례악 (Sanjo and Munmyo Jeryeak) at Studio Paju on March 27 and 28, 2018 for Mirrorball Music (July 24, 2018). In the release text he writes that he wanted to give the drum kit's sound and timbre a native Korean character in the short sanjo. In Stockholm he recorded the guitar and drums duo album 스칸디나비아 풍의 니그리티튜드 (A Scandinavian Negretitude, July 31, 2019) with the guitarist Kyungju Tak (탁경주), who say in the release text that they set out to play the most basic swing language in a concise, modern way. In May 2020 The South Korean Rhythm Kings released the LP Self Ethnography with the keyboardist Chin Sooyoung (진수영) added, pressed in the Czech Republic in an edition of 300; it is the last release by him that has been located.

His playing is described in Korean release texts as improvisation that is open and picture-like, and as an unusual match of theory and practice: the 2009 and 2012 texts call him one of the scene's strongest improvisers and say he can hold his own in mainstream jazz as well as in free improvisation and the study of ethnic music. That range shows in the records. The One Night Trio plays Bill Frisell and "My Funny Valentine" with swing grooves and rhythm-and-blues drum phrases, and the release text singles out a drum solo that blends African, Central American and Middle Eastern rhythm patterns. '나'의 발견 and the Rhythm Kings albums are free improvisation, and Discogs gives Self Ethnography the styles free jazz and avant-garde jazz. The duets with Park Kyungso and Kyungju Tak move between Korean traditional music and swing, and the title Self Ethnography echoes his work as a student of anthropology.

The jazz case is clear: Korean Music Awards recognition in 2010 and 2013 in the jazz and crossover performance category, albums on the labels Audioguy and Mirrorball Music filed as jazz on Bugs and Discogs, and fifteen years of recordings with the Korean improvising scene. The one border case is 산조, 문묘제례악, which Bugs files as a Korean traditional crossover and Apple Music as Korean traditional; it is a gayageum record with a drummer, and the Subgenres above come from his jazz releases only.