Kim Oki (김오키) is a South Korean saxophonist, composer and producer, a former breakdancer who took up the saxophone at about 25 and has since put out records at a pace few Korean musicians match. Korean Wikipedia lists 20 albums between his debut, Cherubim's Wrath (천사의 분노), in 2013 and exorcist king (퇴마왕) in 2025, and Discogs files more than fifty entries under his name once guest spots and reissues are counted. At the 17th Korean Music Awards, whose results were announced on February 27, 2020, he won both Musician of the Year and Best Jazz & Crossover Jazz Album, the latter for Spirit Advance Unit (스피릿선발대). Wikidata gives his place of birth only as South Korea; his birth date, birth city and legal name are not published.

Before music he was a b-boy. English Wikipedia and Discogs describe him as a former breakdancer and backup dancer for the pop group Sechs Kies, and GQ Korea's March 13, 2017 profile ("Zombie Hunter, Kim Oki") repeats that as widely known information while adding that he taught himself free-jazz tenor saxophone from about the age of 25. He has told interviewers that he took up the saxophone after being struck by the trumpet records of Miles Davis, whom he mistook at the time for a saxophonist. A Seoulbeats profile of September 16, 2020 places his move from b-boying to saxophone in the late 2000s and says he played with a jazz group called SMFM, led by the percussionist Park Jae-chun. In a June 2026 W Korea interview he spoke of nearly 20 years in music.

The debut, Cherubim's Wrath, came out on June 24, 2013 and was issued on CD by Mirrorball Jazz World (MJW-0055). Its seven tracks take their spirit from Cho Se-hui's novel The Dwarf Launches a Little Ball (난장이가 쏘아올린 작은 공), and the fourth is named after the book. It won Best Jazz & Crossover Performance at the 11th Korean Music Awards, presented on February 28, 2014 at Yes24 Move Hall in Seoul, where he received the prize from the group Jambinai and said in his speech that he did not think of himself as a strong player and that many others played jazz better. TenAsia reported in March 2014 that he had appeared on EBS Space Gonggam's "2014 Korean Jazz New Faces" special, and on April 1, 2014 he was to play LIG Art Hall in Seoul with the act Mookie Mookie Manmansu, the first show of an annual series with the LIG Culture Foundation.

His second album, Tumultuous Time Travelling (격동의 시간여행, billed on streaming services as TTT), followed on ILIL Sound, with a CD of 14 tracks and a streaming release on January 20, 2015. GQ Korea describes it as a satire of modern Korean history. At the 13th Korean Music Awards, whose nominees were announced on January 28, 2016, Kim Oki was nominated for Musician of the Year and, for this record, Best Jazz & Crossover Performance, and the Lowdown 30 single "Hotter" (더 뜨겁게), on which he is billed as a featured guest, is listed as that year's Best Rock Song winner. The Great Root (거대한 뿌리), released on November 1, 2016, was the first album of a project built on the poems of Kim Su-yeong (1921 to 1968), with the multi-instrumentalist Park Jiha guesting on piri and taepyeongso; the French label Pleasantville Records issued it on cassette in January 2017 in an edition of 200. Pleasantville had already pressed Cherubim's Wrath on LP in 2016, limited to 600 copies, with Bae Ji-hoon on piano, 김성배 on bass, Kyungsoo Seo on drums and Aya Iseki on vocals, and put him on tenor saxophone on the Blue Suns LP by Avant Trio the same year. He is also credited on tenor saxophone and bass clarinet on Park Jiha's Communion (2016; the credit appears on the 2018 Tak:til editions).

The next two years were a flood. LUVOKI was made and recorded on an iPad, put on streaming services on December 26, 2016 and issued as a CDr in January 2017. Fuckingmadness (April 2017), which carries the name of his band Fucking Madness, has the rapper Ejo on three tracks and one piece that runs 24 minutes 48 seconds; Peace to Our Soul (피스투아우어솔) arrived on November 1, 2017 and was pressed on CDr in an edition of 100. GQ Korea's 2017 profile lists his bands of the period as Kim Oki Oriental Youth (김오키 동양청년), The South Korean Rhythm King, 전기사기꾼, Avant Trio and Kim Oki Fucking Madness, and reports him saying that he is not a jazz musician and does not especially like improvised music. In 2018 he recorded two very different albums. Public Domain for Me (퍼블릭도메인포미, released on streaming services on April 9) plays Korean songs by Hong Nanpa (홍난파) and standards such as "All of Me," "Someone to Watch Over Me" and "The Song Is You" with a pianist and a double bassist. Saturn Meditation (새턴메디테이션, November 14) records his Saturn Ballad project, which English Wikipedia describes as imagining what ballads would sound like if people lived on Saturn, with the musician and actor Baek Hyunjin (백현진) as guest singer; Discogs files both 2018 albums under the Saturn Ballad billing.

Spirit Advance Unit followed on July 6, 2019 on streaming services (the CD is dated July 11). Chin Sooyoung (piano) and Sumin Jung (double bass) arranged it with him, Brian Shin plays trumpet on one track, and guests include Baek Hyunjin, the singer Woo and the band Hippy Was Gipsy. Its notes credit lyrics drawn from a 2017 work by Baek Hyunjin, a poem by Song Kyung-dong titled "I'm Not Korean" and the 1983 biography of Jeon Tae-il by Cho Yeong-rae. The reviewer Park Sangjoon of Music Y wrote that the music sheds light on hard lives. At the 17th Korean Music Awards, the results announced on February 27, 2020, the album won Best Jazz & Crossover Jazz Album and he won Musician of the Year; Kyunghyang Shinmun described him as a saxophonist and producer and called the album his ninth regular album, and said the awards ceremony planned for that afternoon at Guro Art Valley Art Theater was cancelled because of the COVID-19 outbreak. Seoulbeats noted that his Musician of the Year win ended BTS's two-year run in that category.

For My Angel (January 10, 2020) has Samuel Seo singing on its first piece and the singer Sep on its fifth. Yun Hyong-keun (윤형근) was released on streaming services on September 2, 2020, a set of six pieces made in connection with a PKM Gallery exhibition of the painter Yun Hyong-keun's work. Kim Oki told W Korea that seeing the paintings in person overwhelmed what he had read about the artist and immediately suggested the music, and PKM Gallery pressed it on white vinyl in an edition of 300, with pre-orders of 80 copies opening on December 13, 2020. In May 2020 he played saxophone and bass clarinet on the LP Self Ethnography by The South Korean Rhythm Kings.

In 2021 and 2022 the output ran in several directions. Everytime (March 29, 2021) is a jazz and hip-hop record on tenor saxophone, and About Prejudice (June 18, 2021) is six pieces of free jazz. Strange, True Beauty (August 15, 2021) and Greeting (April 8, 2022) are on streaming services, and Greeting has LeeHi on "Bye" and DAYE on "Between." He played tenor saxophone on a 2021 7-inch shared by Studio360 (스튜디오360 경음악단) and the Yoon Seok-chul Trio (윤석철 트리오) and on Studio360's LP Midnite Relaxation (October 7, 2022), appeared on Say Sue Me's The Last Thing Left (Damnably, May 13, 2022), where he plays saxophone and arranged "To Dream," and appeared on the cassette by his own band Fucking Madness issued by Channel 1969 and BTPrecords in January 2022. Love Flower (러브플라워) was released on December 2, 2022 and pressed on LP by Sounds Good in 2023 with guests including Kim Il-du (김일두) and 김한주.

A Japanese compilation, Love Japan Edition, came out on March 1, 2024, with a vinyl edition on Bayon Production following in May; its release note says it marked his first Japan tour, which opened at Shibuya WWW in Tokyo, and describes him as an artist with more than 20 albums. A Holiday Edition of re-recorded pieces followed in December 2024. On March 3, 2025 he released 2025 Hip Hop Retreat, a 20-track hip-hop album with guests including Kim Il-du, Brian Shin, Orisaka Yuta and Ruiijikun. exorcist king (퇴마왕), on his new label Andami (안다미), appeared on November 14, 2025: ten pieces for soprano and tenor saxophone and bass clarinet, with Park Min-pyo on taepyeongso, gong and voice and the singer Son Jeong-jin on two tracks, which the label's note presents as the first of a series to be followed by albums from Song Namhyun and Kyungsoo Seo. All (전부, January 9, 2026) is a trio record with Song Namhyun and Kyungsoo Seo built on ten Korean proverbs, and Disgust (April 22, 2026) has 11 tracks, one featuring Q the trumpet.

On June 24, 2026 he released sauve qui peut (Korean title 할 수 있는 자가 구하라, "Whoever Can, Save"), the album that goes with a group exhibition of eight young Korean artists at Gallery Hyundai, running from June 24 to July 26, 2026. W Korea reported that he restrained the saxophone in favour of ambient textures and that guests include Son Jeong-jin, a holder of Important Intangible Cultural Heritage status for the Donghaean Byeolsingut ritual, the actress Ok Ja-yeon and the rapper EJO. His project KimOki Luv Luv was named in the first lineup, announced on July 1, 2026, of the 23rd Jarasum International Jazz Festival, which ran from October 9 to 11 on Jarasum Island in Gapyeong; Sports Kyunghyang described it as jazz-based rock that moves freely between ambient sound and improvisation. A Kim Oki Quartet is listed for the second half of JazzFest Budapest, from November 13 to 16, 2026, at the Korean Cultural Centre in Hungary and the club Jedermann. New collaborations have continued in 2026, among them "Free Yourself" with Ruiijikun (July 31) and "Haze" with Young Posse and Kiggen (September 22).

His music does not stay in one place, and he is cautious about the word jazz. GQ Korea quoted him in 2017 as saying he is not a jazz musician and does not especially like improvised music, even as the Korean Music Awards filed three of his records under Jazz & Crossover and Discogs files his albums under jazz, free jazz, avant-garde jazz, free improvisation, contemporary jazz and, for Everytime, jazzy hip-hop. The Seoulbeats profile describes a blend of jazz, hip-hop, R&B and avant-garde music, compares him with BBNG, The Comet Is Coming and Sons of Kemet, and likens his career trajectory to that of Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Many of his records are built on a text or an image. Cherubim's Wrath answers Cho Se-hui's novel, The Great Root sets out from Kim Su-yeong's poems, and Spirit Advance Unit draws on a poem, a biography and an artwork. In the W Korea interview he distinguishes the two modes: writing to a novel is like making a soundtrack for a story with a clear plot, and working from visual art is more open and freer. The Yun Hyong-keun album and the 2026 Gallery Hyundai record belong to the second kind. His long-running bands and aliases, among them Oriental Youth, Fucking Madness and Saturn Ballad, each carry a different style, and the same small circle keeps turning up in the credits: the pianist Chin Sooyoung, the bassists Sumin Jung and Jae-Kon Jeon, the drummer Kyungsoo Seo, the trumpeter Brian Shin and the flautist Lee Gyujae.

On the instrument, he has called the saxophone the one closest to the human voice, and the W Korea piece reports that the performers around Son Jeong-jin heard his soprano as a taepyeongso. He sometimes records on an iPad, which Discogs credits on LUVOKI and Spirit Advance Unit. The special-thanks list in the notes to Public Domain for Me includes, in Hangul spellings, the saxophonists Pharoah Sanders, Charles Lloyd, Archie Shepp and Joe Henderson, a list of thanks rather than a stated lineage. Asked in 2026 whom he would most like to work with, he named Sonny Rollins, for his habit of renewing himself; Rollins passed away on May 25, 2026.