Kim Soo-yeol (김수열) is a South Korean tenor saxophonist whom the Korean press counts among the first generation of the country's jazz musicians. He is known almost entirely as a sideman: no record under his own name has turned up. His studio credits run from 1978 to 1992, he is billed on a 2010 documentary soundtrack and an undated tribute CD, and live appearances are reported from 2004 to 2014. Discogs also bills him as Kim Soo Yeol and Kim Soo-Yeol, and a cassette sleeve from 1990 prints his name as Kim Soo Youl.

Almost nothing has been written about his life. No source found gives his birth date or birthplace, and none says where he studied or who taught him. His age was printed twice: the Korea JoongAng Daily gave 63 in April 2004, and a Sports Hankook profile of the pianist Shin Kwan-woong gave 70 in January 2011. Both point to a birth around 1940 or 1941, which is why the header says only "about 1940". His career, as far as the records show, took place in Seoul.

His name entered jazz history in 1978. The arranger Lee Pan-geun (이판근) gathered a quintet at a studio in Majang-dong, Seoul: the trumpeter Kang Dae-gwan, Kim on tenor saxophone, the pianist Son Soo-gil (손수길), the bassist Lee Soo-young (이수영) and the drummer Choi Se-jin. They recorded Korean folk songs such as "Arirang" and "Han-o-baek-nyeon" beside "Rainy Night in Georgia" and "My Favorite Things", and the LP came out on the Dai Han label on February 27, 1979 (Discogs notes that it was actually recorded in 1978). The producer was Um Jin (엄진). A 2013 Tenasia article on the reissue calls Kang, Kim and Choi well-known first-generation figures and asks whether the record might be Korea's first modern jazz album. It was reissued on CD in 2013, on vinyl in 2015 and as a 40th anniversary vinyl edition in 2018.

The next credits come from Seoul sessions for the Oasis label. On Land of Morning Calm (Early Spring in Seoul), the Shin Kwan-woong Jazz Quartet's LP of March 1987, Discogs credits him on tenor saxophone with Shin on piano, Ham Ki-ho on bass and Yoo Young-soo on drums; Kim Jun produced it. The programme mixes "Take the 'A' Train", "Satin Doll" and "All Blues" with Korean songs, among them "Blues Arirang" and "Come Back to Busan Harbor". He is again the tenor saxophonist on the percussionist Ryu Bok-sung's '88 Jazz Masters (SRB records, issued on LP and cassette around 1987 and 1988), on three long tracks including a 17 minute "Mut" and "Take Five", and on Kim Jun's vocal album Oldies But Goodies (Oasis, March 30, 1990), a set of standards with Shin arranging and playing piano. The last studio-era credit found is two tracks, "Spiritual" and "Caravan", on the LP of the first Korea Jazz Festival (Doremi Records, 1992), where he is billed with Choi Se-jin and two musicians whose names appear on Discogs only in Hangul, the pianist Lee Young-kyung (이영경) and 장응규. The release does not say who played what.

Live listings fill in the later years. The Korea JoongAng Daily announced a sixth anniversary night in April 2004 at the Cheongdam-dong club Once in a Blue Moon, billed as "the Korean version of the Buena Vista Social Club", with Kim, Choi Se-jin, Kim Jun, Park Sung-yeon, Choi Sun-bae, the trombonist Hong Deok-pyo, the clarinetist Lee Dong-ki and Shin Kwan-woong. From 2003 the pianist's Korean Jazz First Generation Band played Thursday nights at Shin's Hongdae club Moon Glow, and the Sports Hankook profile reports that the last live show before the club closed was on December 30, 2010, with Shin on piano, Choi Sun-bae on trumpet, Lee Dong-ki on clarinet and Kim on saxophone, with 김영후 on double bass and 조성국 on drums. The same article describes a large black and white photograph on the club wall of the stars of the documentary Bravo! Jazz Life, among them Kim with his saxophone.

That 2010 documentary by Nam Moo-sung, about the surviving first-generation musicians, lists him in its lead cast on Korean Wikipedia, and the Seoul Shinmun's July 2010 interview with the director names him, as a saxophonist, among the veterans it follows. He is billed on eight tracks of its soundtrack CD (Kang & Music, August 2010): "Moonglow", "Corcovado", "Polka Dots and Moonbeams", "Whisper Not", "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White", "All of Me", "물안개" ("Water Mist") and "Antonio's Song", with Shin, Choi Sun-bae, Lee Dong-ki, 임헌수, 장응규 and, on the vocal tracks, Park Sung-yeon. The Korea Times previewed a concert on January 28, 2011 at the Seoul Arts Center in which seven of the veterans were to recreate the soundtrack, and named him on tenor saxophone. A listing of Jeju CBS events on Korean Wikipedia places the first-generation band, with Kim among its members, at the Jeju Arts Center on April 26, 2011 for the station's tenth anniversary.

His later billings are in 2013 and 2014. A preview of April 22, 2013 announced a concert on April 30 at Olympus Hall in Samseong-dong to mark UNESCO's International Jazz Day, with the vocalist Nah Youn-sun and the first-generation band: Shin Kwan-woong, Ryu Bok-sung, Kim on tenor saxophone, Choi Sun-bae, the drummer 임헌수, the bassist 전성식, Kim Jun and Lee Dong-ki. In March 2014 a Yonhap report on the Gwangju band All That Jazz, led by the bassist 최기철, said it would play with him, described there as a first-generation jazz musician, at the Gwangju Contents Industry Support Center on March 22. He also takes a solo, "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes", and joins the closing jam on Kang Dae-gwan's tribute CD 고희 헌정 라이브 앨범 (undated), a tribute for Kang's 70th birthday.

The most recent dated appearance found is the Gwangju concert of March 22, 2014. No later press item and no notice of his death were found, so his present activity is not known.

No interview or review discusses his playing, so this section sticks to what the records and listings show.

The credits place him in a tenor saxophone role inside the standard jazz repertoire: "Take the 'A' Train", "Satin Doll", "All Blues", "Take Five", "Moonglow", "Corcovado", "Whisper Not" and "Caravan" all appear in his programmes. Several of his records also take Korean material into that setting, notably the folk songs "Arirang" and "Gasiri" on the 1978 session and "Blues Arirang" and "Han-o-baek-nyeon" on Shin Kwan-woong's 1987 quartet album. He plays in small groups (a quintet in 1978, a quartet in 1987), as the lone horn behind a singer on Kim Jun's 1990 album, and in the veterans' all-star lineups of the 2000s and 2010s. Discogs files all of these releases under jazz.

What is not known is any biographical account of influences, early training or army-band service. The wider first generation is described in Korean press as having learned its craft on the United States Eighth Army stage after the Korean War, but no source found says that of him.