Kim Hee-hyun (김희현) is a South Korean drummer, a founding member of the Seoul Jazz Quartet with the saxophonist Lee Jung-sik, the bassist Jang Eung-gyu (장응규) and the pianist Yang Jun-ho (양준호). Very little about his early life has been published. No source found gives his birth date or birthplace, his teachers or his schooling, and no record under his own name as leader turned up, so this profile rests on press reports about the quartet and on the credits printed on other people's records. His name appears in two forms: Korean papers and most credits print only 김희현, while the English credit on the 1987 album '88 Jazz Masters reads Kim Hee-Hyun.

On age, Newstomato gave him as 72 in June 2022 and Yonhap News as 71 in November 2023. Both papers also give the saxophonist Lee Jung-sik as 62, although the two reports are seventeen months apart, which suggests they count age differently. Taken together the figures point to about 1951, and that is an estimate, not a recorded date.

What the press agrees on is where he worked. Newstomato (2022), Metro Seoul (2023) and Yonhap (2023) all describe him as a drummer of Cho Yong-pil and the Great Birth (조용필과 위대한 탄생), the rock band of the singer Cho Yong-pil, and Metro Seoul calls him the band's drummer in its heyday. Korean Wikipedia's article on the band lists a 김희현 on drums in its fourth line-up, and its article on the guitarist Yu Yeong-seon's group says that his 1986 to 1988 stint with the Great Birth was alongside Lee Ho-jun on piano, Kim Hee-hyun on drums and Song Hong-seop on bass, with tours of the United States and Japan. Discogs lists 김희현 on drums on the Cho Yong-pil album titled 15집 조용필과 위대한 탄생 (Daeyoung AV, DYL-035, 1994; reissued by Pil Records in 2013). Newstomato adds that he and Jang Eung-gyu both belonged to the KBS band at the time the quartet began.

The same Discogs entry for 김희현 (artist 5964345) counts nineteen appearances on other artists' records between 1988 and 2013, almost all of them pop, rock and ballad albums. They include drums and percussion on Kim Hyun-chul's 1989 debut album, drums on records by Park Hak-ki, Jang Pil-sun, Min Hae-gyeong and Park Mi-kyung, drums and percussion on Oh Seok-jun's Dream & Love (1988), and percussion and handbell on a 1991 Kim Soo-chul release. Discogs files the Kim Hyun-chul album under jazz, rock, Latin and pop, with the styles smooth jazz and bossa nova among its tags.

The jazz credits begin in the late 1980s. On Discogs the 1987 LP '88 Jazz Masters by the Ryu Bok Sung All Stars with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra lists Kim Hee-Hyun on drums, beside the leader Ryu Bok Sung on percussion, Shin Kwan-woong on piano, Kim Soo-yeol on tenor saxophone and Ham Ki-ho on bass; it is three long pieces, "Mut (Charm)", "Take Five" and "Tahyang-sari". Discogs keeps that credit under a separate artist entry (6998289) from the one that holds his session work. The two are treated here as one man because the name, the instrument and the Seoul jazz scene all match, but no source states the link outright.

The Seoul Jazz Quartet is the group his name belongs to. In Newstomato's account it grew out of casual playing in an empty office of the KBS band, where Kim and Jang Eung-gyu both worked, and Lee Jung-sik and Yang Jun-ho completed the four. The paper gives both the early 1980s and 1989 to 1993 as its years and says the real formation and active period fell between 1989 and 1993. It played the club Pablo in Bangbae-dong and then All That Jazz in Itaewon, and later Hoam Art Hall, the Sejong Center and the Seoul Arts Center, and toured outside Seoul, which was unusual for a jazz band at the time. Members' own careers pulled it apart without any formal break-up. His drum credit on Lee Jung-sik's Love II (Oasis Records, 1991) comes from the album notes on Discogs, which name 김희현 as the drummer, and on Lee's 화두 - The Korean Jazz Standards Vol. 1 (BMG Korea, 1999) Discogs credits him with drums on tracks 1 to 10. In 2002 the Kyunghyang Shinmun's review of Shin Kwan-woong's trio album Family (Danal Entertainment) named the drummer as 김희현, with Jang Eung-gyu on double bass.

The four met again in 2022, after about twenty-five years by Yonhap's count and twenty-seven by Newstomato's. A reunion set at the Hapjeong music bar Gaucho was announced for June 18, 2022, and the quartet played Mapo Art Center on August 26, 2022 with Kim Jun and the singer Woongsan as guests. On the stage that night Lee Jung-sik introduced Kim as the oldest member but the "youngest" in jazz, and Kim answered by introducing Lee. Metro Seoul reported a Saturday performance at the Gisan Gugakdang in Sancheong, South Gyeongsang, on June 24, 2023, and on November 19, 2023 the quartet gave a concert at the Mapo Art Hall Mac with Kim Jun and Maria Kim as guests. In the Yonhap interview before it Kim said the music had become more rounded than the direct, hard-driving playing of their youth, and that he wanted to blend Korean traditional music into jazz, noting that jazz already carries African folk music and European classical music in it. Lee Jung-sik said Kim teaches percussion at the traditional-music college of Chung-Ang University; Newstomato had said in 2022 that he runs a drum school at his own academy.

In October 2025 Yonhap announced a Mapo Cultural Foundation concert, 2025 Jazz All-Stars, billed for November 21, 2025 at Art Hall Mac. It named Kim Jun, Choi Sun-bae and Kim Hee-hyun as the first-generation musicians, and described him as someone who had spent half a century on the drums. Woongsan, Lee Jung-sik, the pianist and singer Maria Kim, the pianist Jaehun Kang and the drummer Shin Dong-jin were named for the later generations.

No interview about his influences or technique turned up, so this section describes only what the sources say. Newstomato's review of the August 2022 reunion heard Korean traditional rhythm in the drumming, likening it to the beat of the samgomu drum dance, and the repertoire it lists runs from standards ("My Funny Valentine", "Straight, No Chaser", "St. Thomas") through "Mr. Magic" and "Just the Two of Us" to Korean songs and a "Bat No Re Variation" built on the folk boat song 뱃노래, in which "Take Five" slides into an Arirang melody. In 2023 Kim Hee-hyun himself spoke of placing gugak rhythms inside jazz, and Lee Jung-sik described the project as drums expressing Korean rhythmic patterns while the saxophone uses Korean techniques.