Kim Kwang Min (김광민) is a South Korean pianist and composer, born in Seoul on February 22, 1960, who studied at Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory and has worked for four decades between jazz, lyrical piano music and Korean pop. Wikidata and the English-language Korean press write his name Kim Kwang-min; Discogs and Apple Music bill his albums as Kim Kwang Min, and his sleeves have printed it as Kwang Min Kim (2002, 2007) and Min Kim (1993). He has made six albums, from 1991 to 2017, hosted a long-running television music program, and has taught in the practical music department of Dongduk Women's University since 1998.

He began on the piano as a small child (Korean Wikipedia says at four, a 2018 Sungkyun Times interview says three, with a pause from age nine) and was playing in bands by middle school. At his father's urging he studied trade at Myongji University, graduating in 1986, and told the Sungkyun Times that he first heard jazz through fusion in high school. Korean Wikipedia says he formed a progressive rock band, 동서남북, in 1980 and played in the band 시나브로, which won a bronze prize at the university song festival in 1981. As a student he played piano on advertising jingles, and he became a session keyboardist: Discogs credits him on records by the singer-songwriter Jo Dong-jin (1983, 1985, 1986), on Yang Hee-eun's 1985 album, which he also arranged, and on Cho Yong-pil's seventh album (1985), and Korean press adds Kim Min-ki and says he played keyboards in Cho Yong-pil's band, the Great Birth. Newsis reported in 2020 that the money from this work paid for his studies in the United States.

He moved to the United States in January 1986. The Seoul Shinmun wrote in 1999 that he graduated at the top of his class from Berklee and the New England Conservatory and received Berklee's outstanding alumni award, which is given to one graduate every three years; Hankook Ilbo dates his Berklee graduation to 1989, and Korean Wikipedia says he spent six years in the United States. Lady Kyunghyang wrote in 2004 that he made his debut album while at the New England Conservatory. The Seoul Shinmun placed him with the guitarist Han Sang-won, the pianist Chung Won-young and Han Chung-wan, all born in 1960, as the first generation of Korean Berklee returnees, and Newsis used the same grouping in 2020.

His first album, Letter from the Earth (지구에서 온 편지), came out on Warner Music Korea in 1991 (Discogs also dates an LP 1990). Newsis says its title piece is a tribute to the singer-songwriter Yoo Jae-ha, and Hankook Ilbo says Kim had introduced Yoo to a record label before Yoo's debut. Warner Music Korea included his "Morning" on its 1992 compilation Best of Jazz Fusion Vol. 13. The second, Shadow of the Moon (Hana Music, 1993), was reissued in spring 2000, when the Seoul Shinmun named its players as the drummer Bob Moses, the bassist David Clark, the flutist Anders Bostrom and the guitarist Brett Wilmott, with Lee Ji-yoon singing on two tracks, and called it a work well regarded among jazz and new age listeners that sat closer to jazz than his third album. Newsis describes it as the more experimental of his early records and one that was not a commercial hit but is still discussed as a classic by serious listeners.

The third, 보내지 못한 편지 (The Letter That Couldn't Be Sent), appeared in September 1999 on Nanjang Music; Newsis says it sold more than 100,000 copies, which is rare for an instrumental album. 혼자 걷는 길 (Sentimental Spirit), released in February 2002 on T-Entertainment, was reviewed by Kyunghyang Shinmun on February 21, 2002 as an album that builds a distinctive harmony from jazz rhythm and classical harmonic progressions, played with an American rhythm section whose bassist and drummer had worked on records by Pat Metheny and Wynton Marsalis. It includes "All the Things You Are," an arrangement of a Yoo Jae-ha song, and a track on which he sings. Time Travel (시간여행), a two-disc set from March 2007, is built mostly from standards, pop songs and film themes, among them "Here's That Rainy Day," "My One and Only Love," "Time in a Bottle," "Sealed with a Kiss" and a Brahms lullaby, along with his own "The Way to School" (학교 가는 길), which Hankook Ilbo says went into a fifth-grade music textbook. You & I (너와 나), released on March 16, 2017, was his first album in ten years. Its title piece "염원" (Yearning) is in two parts, one track has a string quartet, and Hankook Ilbo called another a jazz-style piece of free piano playing. He told the paper he planned to release an album a year, beginning with one tentatively titled Space; no later album appears in the catalogues.

Television made him a familiar figure. Lady Kyunghyang wrote in 2004 that he first appeared in the jazz lesson segment of an MBC program and went on to host 수요예술무대 (Wednesday Art Stage), co-hosting with the singer Lee Hyun-woo; Korean Wikipedia and Newsis put his stretch on the show at about 13 years, and the Sungkyun Times credits the show with helping to spark interest in jazz in Korea and puts his tally above 500 episodes. On May 21, 2008 he headlined the Korean Jazz-Pop Crossover Night at the Seoul Jazz Festival at the Sejong Center with the singer Lena Park and the actor-singer Lee Hyun-woo. On January 20 and 21, 2011 he opened a concert series at the Sejong Center's Grand Theater with Yoon Sang and the ballad singer Sung Si-kyung, which the Korea Times described as marking 20 years since his debut. In 2020 he drew fresh attention from an appearance on MBC's variety show Nolmyeon Mwohani?, and a concert at Lotte Concert Hall, his first solo concert in three years, was announced for August 15, 2020. A lecture for Seoul Cyber University's piano department, billed as a talk by "jazz pianist Kim Kwang-min," is scheduled for November 7, 2026.

His own account and the critical record both say jazz, though the retail record says new age. In the 2018 Sungkyun Times interview he called himself a jazz pianist and composer, said he found jazz through fusion, and described improvisation as central to it. The Seoul Shinmun (1999), a 2002 Maeil Shinmun notice for an MBC broadcast of his piano performance, Lady Kyunghyang (2004), the Korea Times (2008), Newsis (2020) and the Daehak Journal (October 2026) all call him a jazz pianist. Korean Wikipedia lists his genres as jazz and new age and files him among Korean jazz pianists, and MusicBrainz tags him jazz, new age and easy listening. Bugs gives his artist genre as jazz and new age, and files Shadow of the Moon and The Letter That Couldn't Be Sent under jazz and new age with the style contemporary jazz. Warner's 1992 Best of Jazz Fusion compilation carried his work.

The counter-evidence is just as plain. Discogs files only Shadow of the Moon under jazz (with the style Easy Listening): Letter from the Earth is listed under Classical and Folk, World & Country, The Letter That Couldn't Be Sent and Sentimental Spirit under Pop, and Time Travel under Pop, Folk, World & Country and Stage & Screen. Apple Music places every one of the albums it carries in New Age, and Bugs does the same for Letter from the Earth, Time Travel and You & I. The Korea Times said in 2011 that he had made his own genre by mixing jazz, classical and new age, and compared him to George Winston. Newsis lists his enthusiasms as funk and progressive rock as well as jazz, with Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, and Ennio Morricone's film music, among his influences. Most of his best-known pieces are lyrical, melancholy melodies for solo piano or small band rather than improvisation-led jazz, and a large part of his public profile comes from television and from session and guest work on pop records. Crossover is therefore the accurate label: a Berklee-trained jazz pianist whose records are mostly in the gentler, melodic territory between jazz and new age.