Lee Bong-jo (이봉조) was a South Korean tenor saxophonist, composer, arranger and bandleader who passed away on August 31, 1987, of a heart attack. His public identity is mostly popular music. He wrote or arranged some of the best-known Korean songs of the 1960s and 1970s, among them 밤안개, 안개 and 무인도, led a television network's house orchestra for years and scored films. His jazz identity is real but narrower. He played jazz tenor on the US Eighth Army stages from the mid-1950s, studied with a first-generation tenor player and was nicknamed the Korean Stan Getz, but his own saxophone albums are mostly instrumental versions of Korean pop songs that Discogs files as light music, and only some carry a Jazz tag, always beside Pop or Folk. Both sides are set out below. Discogs and his own releases bill him Lee Bong Jo; Korean sources write Lee Bong-jo, and Japanese releases used 李鳳祚.

He was born in Namhae, South Gyeongsang Province, and grew up and went to school in Jinju. His birth date is given as May 1 in every source, but the year differs. Korean Wikipedia, the Digital Jinju Encyclopedia and a 2024 Gyeongnam news feature say 1931, and the news feature adds that he was registered as born in 1932; the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, Japanese Wikipedia and Wikidata give 1932. This profile gives both years.

According to the Jinju and national encyclopedias, he became a pupil of the songwriter Lee Jae-ho (이재호) while still in middle school. He entered the architecture department of Hanyang University in 1952 and graduated in 1958, after a two-year leave of absence. He learned tenor saxophone as a pupil of Eom Tommy (엄토미), a first-generation Korean jazz player. Korean Wikipedia says that from 1954, still a student, he played jazz saxophone as a hobby at Eighth Army venues while working as a civil servant in the Seoul city government's civil engineering department, and that he left the civil service in 1961 to become a full-time musician. The two encyclopedias place the start of his band, the Lee Bong-jo Band, after his 1958 graduation and say it played in nightclubs on US military bases, where he was devoted to American jazz.

His breakthrough as a songwriter came in 1962 with 밤안개, sung by the singer Hyun Mi (현미). The Digital Jinju Encyclopedia calls it his composition, while the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes an adapted song for which he wrote the Korean lyrics, so the sources differ on his exact role. In 1964 his band won the grand prize at the MBC TV national light-music contest, and he won the Blue Dragon Film Awards music prize for the film 맨발의 청춘. At the end of 1964 he became the house bandleader when Dongyang TV opened, and Korean newspapers later call him the former TBC orchestra leader. The drummer Ryu Bok-sung told the Seoul Shinmun in 2005 that he joined Lee's band in 1961 and played in it for five years. In 1968 the trumpeter Kang Dae-gwan joined the TBC orchestra at its founding on Lee's recommendation, according to the Kyunghyang Shinmun's 2017 obituary of Kang. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture lists him as KBS house bandleader in 1980. Korean Wikipedia and the 2024 feature name three film scores, 가정교사 (1963), 광야의 호랑이 (1965) and 안개 (1967), and Korean Wikipedia credits him with launching or promoting the singers Hyun Mi and 정훈희.

Songs of his went abroad too. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture lists prizes for his songs at song festivals in Tokyo in 1970 (안개, sung by 정훈희), in Greece in 1971 and 1973, and in Chile in 1974, 1975 and 1979, and a Republic of Korea culture and arts award in 1971. Discogs confirms the Tokyo entry from the Japanese side: the 1970 Victor single 霧の街 and the festival LP credit him with the Korean lyrics of the song. In 1987 he was among the advisers preparing the performance programme of the Seoul Olympics' cultural events, and he died that August.

Discogs files eleven releases under his name in the main role, from 1969 to 1985, plus several undated LPs. Ten are albums billed to him as leader, the saxophone and light-music records described below, none of them listing a vocalist, and one is a vocal LP by Hyun Mi for which he is credited as composer and arranger. Their track lists are Korean popular songs and trot standards, many of them his own, with a handful of English-language pieces such as "Feelings" and "My Way" on one album. Four of the ten albums billed to him as leader carry a Jazz tag on Discogs, in each case beside Pop or Folk; the others are tagged Pop, Folk, or, for a 1978 disco album, Funk and Soul. Apple Music lists a 1966 Oasis Records collection that he shares with the trumpeter Kim In Bae, with saxophone versions of pop pieces such as "Love Potion No. 9", "Charade" and "Misty Night". No session as a sideman on a jazz record has been found. The saxophonist Lee Jung-sik (이정식) chose his song 꽃밭에서 for the 1999 album 화두: The Korean Jazz Standards Vol. 1, a jazz record on which Discogs credits Lee Bong Jo as composer.

After his death, Namhae County, where he was born, kept his name alive with an annual national song contest and a national saxophone contest named for him. A 2024 Gyeongnam news feature reports that he was buried in Cheonan, that Namhae artists proposed a Lee Bong-jo music museum in 2019 and that the singer Hyun Mi pledged to donate his saxophone and handwritten scores, and that the plan has stalled. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture says he left many recordings and more than 300 songs.

What is not known is considerable. No interview in which he speaks about jazz was found, and no contemporary jazz-press review. Discogs does not say which of the two saxophonists plays on each track of the two 1977 Hit Records albums, which are billed to him jointly with 한인창 and 강승룡, and it dates several of his LPs not at all. Korean Wikipedia says that late in his career he also released saxophone albums of Christian music, but gives no titles and none were found.

He is a saxophonist of the American tenor tradition adapted to Korean popular song. Korean Wikipedia and two news features call him the Korean Stan Getz, and the Digital Jinju Encyclopedia says he threw himself into American jazz on the military circuit; a 2026 Namhae feature says he joined jazz and swing to a Korean sensibility. The records themselves show the second half of that sentence more than the first. The albums play melodies such as 돌아와요 부산항에, 무인도 and 보고싶은 얼굴 in a light-music style, and the arrangements and compositions are written for a broadcast orchestra and a pop audience.

He is best understood as a Korean popular-music bandleader with a jazz saxophonist's training and reputation, working between mainstream jazz tenor playing and Korean pop and trot song. The two subgenre tags on this profile are meant in that limited sense, and nothing in the sources found calls him a bebop or modern-jazz improviser.