Kim Jun (김준) is a South Korean singer and songwriter whom the Seoul Shinmun, in a 2013 interview, called a first-generation male jazz vocalist with more than fifty years in the music. He was born in January 1940 in Sinuiju, a city on the Yalu River that is now in North Korea, and his family left for the South when he was a small child, so his schooling, his career and his clubs have all been in South Korea. The same newspaper gave his birth name as Kim San-hyeon (김산현) in 2006. Discogs files him under 김준 with the spellings Kim Jun and Kim Joon; his first solo LP in 1969 prints Kim Joon, while his jazz records and the 2023 album that carries his portrait say Kim Jun.

Before jazz he was a pop singer and a prolific writer of songs. He sang baritone in the male quartet Johnny Brothers from the early 1960s until 1968, made standards-and-pop LPs from 1969, and says he has composed about a thousand songs. His jazz records begin in 1980, and from then on the jazz side is what he has put forward: the albums, a jazz club of his own, a founding role in a jazz society and a place among the veterans Korean press calls the first generation of the music.

His own account of the early years, given in the 2013 interview, begins with a landowning family in Sinuiju. After the end of Japanese rule the Soviet occupation and the new northern government confiscated the property and his father was marked for purging, so the family took a boat from Jinnampo to Incheon. The 2006 Seoul Shinmun series puts the escape in 1946, when he was six. He started school at Namsan Elementary School, and the family then moved through Wonju, Yeongwol and Mungyeong; during the Korean War they retreated via Mokpo to Jeju Island and settled in the Daejeong area. On Jeju he sang in the choir of a church at a US military base, won a music contest on the island, learned piano, trumpet and violin, ran sprints and marathons at Daejeong High School and graduated in 1959. That year he placed third in a national student music competition and entered Kyung Hee University's music college on a scholarship to study vocal music.

When the university closed after the April 1960 uprising he worked as a disc jockey at the New World music listening room in Jongno 2-ga, sang in a church choir called Zion, and briefly stood in for an absent member of a quartet named Melotone. After the military coup of May 1961 he was selected for the chorus of the state-founded Yegreen troupe, headed by Kim Jong-pil. When Yegreen was dissolved after about a year, he and three contemporaries from the chorus formed Johnny Brothers: Kim Jun, Kim Hyeon-jin, Yang Yeong-il and Jin Seong-man. He dates the group to 1962; a September 2025 Herald notice of Jin Seong-man's death dates its founding to 1963. They were regulars on TBC television's Show Show Show and had hits including 방앗간집 둘째딸 (The Miller's Second Daughter), 마포 사는 황부자 and, as the theme of the film Red Muffler, 빨간 마후라, which the 2006 series says composer Hwang Mun-pyeong wrote in a few hours. The song became an air force anthem. The quartet gave a farewell show on TBC in August 1968.

Kim was the first of the four to go solo. His first album, 김준과 Top Song Vol. 1 (Sung Eum, SEL-5-2529; Discogs gives November 7, 1969), collected the standard-pop and jazz numbers he liked to sing, and the 2006 series says they are still his favourite songs. In December 1969 the four reunited briefly as Meari-jin on MBC television at the urging of the Seoul Shinmun's publisher, then split for good. That same year he formed a side group, Four Dynamics, with Park Sang-gyu, Cha Do-gyun and Jang U, and the 2006 article reports that they were still performing together after thirty-six years.

From 1970 he says he put out a record in every year, and the Discogs entries of the 1970s show a singer-songwriter working in pop: a 1970 LP shared with the group Shegreen (쉐그린), two Oasis Records albums in 1973 (독집 and the compilation 태양의 데이트), 마음의 날개 on Sung Eum in 1974, and 휘파람 하이킹 (Oasis, 1976), on which he composed and wrote all nine songs of side A and produced. His songs for other singers include "사랑하니까" for Patti Kim, "나 이제 여기에" for Park Kyung-hee (gold prize at the 1984 TBC World Song Festival), "내 마음은 풍선" for Jang Mi-hwa, "그래도 설마하고" for Im Hee-sook, "Blue Smile" for Lee Mi-bae and "청바지 아가씨" for Park Sang-min.

The turn to jazz is dated by the records. In 1980 he founded a company, International JUN Free Art, and released Just Friends: Kim Jun in Jazz (Oasis Records, OL-2580), recorded with the American pianist and arranger Fred Hughes Jr., who arranged and conducted, the bassist and singer Bruce Shockley and the drummer Matt Smith, according to the sleeve. It sets standards ("Ramona", "Swan Lake", "Too Young", "I Left My Heart in San Francisco") beside Korean songs, among them "돌아와요 부산항에" and his own "사랑하니까", "미워할수 없는 너" and "휘파람 하이킹". A short note he wrote for the sleeve calls jazz the most rational, natural, human and spiritual way of making music and hopes the record will help jazz spread in Korea. Merry Christmas in Jazz (Oasis, OL-2547) followed in November 1983, and Just Friends on EMI (OLE-539) in June 1984, with Shockley on bass, Hughes on piano and You Young Soo on drums. In October 1985 he is the vocalist on In Jazz Style Vol. 1 (Oasis, OL-2659), credited to the International Jazz Workshop and recorded live at Oasis Recording Studio on October 5 and 26, with his company credited as producer.

The late 1980s tie him to the pianist Shin Kwan-woong. Merry Christmas La La La: White Christmas (Oasis, OL-2845, 1987) is billed to 김준 and the Shin Kwan-Woong Jazz Quartet, with Shin arranging and conducting and Kim producing. 어제.오늘.내일 (New Seoul Record, NSRS-AUO2, 1989, two LPs) names Shin on piano, Ham Ki-ho on bass, Kim Jong-hyun on drums, Lee Jeong-sik on tenor saxophone and Choo Ok-jin on chorus. Oldies But Goodies (Oasis, OL-3062, March 30, 1990), a set of standards from "What a Wonderful World" to "Moon River", "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way", has Shin on piano and arrangements, Ham on bass, Kim Jong-hyun on drums and Kim Soo-yeol on tenor saxophone. Discogs also credits him on two tracks of a 1992 festival compilation, 대한민국재즈페스티발 2 ("Summer Time" and a samba number).

He has also built institutions. Seoul Shinmun says he was founding president of the Korean Jazz Club (KJC, 한국재즈모임), later its adviser, and in 2013 a director of the Korea Jazz Association. He taught as an adjunct professor of popular music at Suwon Women's College, and sat on the operating committee of Far East Broadcasting. He opened the Kim Jun Jazz Club in Seoul's Pyeongchang-dong in 2002, where in 2006 he was regularly playing piano and singing, with his wife, Kim Mi-ja, running the place alongside him, and moved it in 2012 to Hopyeong-dong in Namyangju, above the Korean restaurant his wife runs. In 2013 he was also art director of evening shows on the Mulbit stage on the Han River at Yeouido, with audiences of 700 to 800, and said he hoped to found a Kim Jun Jazz Scholarship Foundation, a jazz academy and a jazz museum. In November 2015 the club was reported at Gugi-dong in Jongno-gu, Seoul, when he and the designer Lim Seon-ok held a holiday jazz party there with the Na Ho-su Trio; he and his wife had walked in Lim's show at the 2015 F/W Seoul Fashion Week. In 2006 he announced an autobiography for that November titled 타박타박 주절주절 두비두바.

Concerts and appearances mark the later decades: a dinner concert in 1995 and a jazz concert in 1996, a Seoul Soloist Jazz Orchestra concert in 2007, and, as one of seven veterans, the sixth-anniversary night of the Seoul club Once in a Blue Moon in April 2004 (the Korea JoongAng Daily gave his age as 64). Nam Mu-sung's 2010 film Bravo! Jazz Life follows first-generation Korean jazz musicians and younger players preparing a tribute concert and album, and Korean Wikipedia lists Kim Jun among its principal cast beside Choi Sun-bae, Shin Kwan-woong and Park Sung-yeon; the film was selected for competition at the Jecheon International Music and Film Festival, and he appeared in the film's concerts in 2010 and 2011. He was billed to sing with the Korean Jazz First Generation Band at the UNESCO World Jazz Day concert at Olympus Hall in Samseong-dong, Seoul, on April 30, 2013, organized by the Korea Jazz Association, with Choi Sun-bae on trumpet, Kim Su-yeol on tenor saxophone, Im Heon-su on drums, Jeon Seong-sik on bass and Lee Dong-gi on clarinet. In February 2019 the band, then Shin Kwan-woong, Kim Jun, Choi Sun-bae and Im Heon-su with an average age of 76, met Paju city councillors and announced concerts for March 10, 2019 at the Munsan Happiness Center.

The last years have brought recognition. Oasis Records released The 45th Pops in Jazz (sixteen standards) in December 2021, and in June 2023 issued The Best Living Legend of Jazz (Oasis, OL-4001), a limited edition of 500 copies on LP with a miniature CD, remastered at 24 bit and 96 kHz from the reel master tapes, with a cover that shows him in a hat and dark glasses. That month Universal Music announced What a Wonderful World: A Tribute to Kim Jun, produced by the singer Woongsan, then president of the Korea Jazz Association, on which younger singers reinterpret eight of his songs and he sings "What a Wonderful World" himself; a tribute concert was announced for July 5. Three of the songs reappeared on Woongsan's January 2024 album 사랑 그 그리움3. Streaming services also list a 2023 set, Memories of Moonglow, a 2023 Super Collection, and a single, "The First Impression" with the singer Jumi Lee, dated October 25, 2024. On October 29, 2025 Yonhap News reported that he, Choi Sun-bae and the drummer Kim Hee-hyun would represent the first generation in "2025 Jazz All-Stars", a concert billed for November 21, 2025 at Art Hall Mac in the Mapo Culture Center, Seoul, with Woongsan, Maria Kim and other younger musicians; it called him a living legend of Korean jazz.

He is a baritone who has treated jazz as a pleasure open to everyone. In 2013 he called it enjoyable music that anyone can join without strain; in 2006 he told the Seoul Shinmun that jazz is a music of empty space whose charm lies in turning dissonance into harmony and whose life is the improvised breath of notes that are not written down, and he repeated the musicians' saying that skipping practice for a day is noticed by you, for two days by others and for three days means leaving the stage. The same article called him the "gentleman of jazz" (재즈계의 신사) and noted that he accompanied himself at the piano at his club.

His repertoire is the American songbook and film-and-pop standards ("Charade", "The Shadow of Your Smile", "Love Letters", "Summertime", "Take the 'A' Train", "My Funny Valentine", "Doxy", "Bye Bye Blackbird", "Moon River", "Hello Dolly", "My Way", "What a Wonderful World"), seasonal Christmas sets, and his own Korean songs in jazz arrangements. His records are small-group vocal jazz in the mainstream manner, backed by a piano quartet (Hughes in the early 1980s, Shin Kwan-woong from 1987), and the album titles from the 1980s on, Kim Jun in Jazz, Pops in Jazz, Oldies But Goodies, say what he is doing: carrying pop and songbook melodies into jazz phrasing.

His jazz standing sits beside a larger pop past. Discogs lists thirteen main releases under his name, six of them from 1969 to 1976 (mostly tagged pop, soul and folk) and seven from 1980 on, all tagged Jazz. He is best known to the wider public as a Johnny Brothers voice and as a composer, and Korean press, from the 2013 interview to the 2025 concert notice, presents him as a first-generation jazz vocalist.