Lee Jung-sik (이정식) is a South Korean saxophonist, a tenor player above all, whose name has run through Seoul's jazz clubs, recording studios and concert halls since the early 1980s. Korean Wikipedia, Wikidata and MusicBrainz give his birth date as August 14, 1961, and the ages in the press fit: the Korea JoongAng Daily put him at 42 in January 2003 and the news site Newstomato at 62 in June 2022. Wikidata places his birth in Hampyeong County, North Jeolla Province, and the JoongAng Daily says he grew up there. His name is romanized in several ways on record. Discogs and the cover of his album My Life say Lee Jung Sik, the JoongAng Daily has printed both Lee Jung-sik and Lee Jeong-sik, streaming services say Lee Jungsik, and a 1991 cassette prints Lee Jeong Seek.

The JoongAng Daily's 2003 profile describes a self-taught player. He started on the harmonica, was handed a saxophone by a junior high school teacher for the school band, and bought his own with money his parents had given him for school trips. He attended a farming school, joined a traveling musical troupe, and was playing cabarets while still in senior high school. He left home at 18 hoping to find a Seoul club that would let him play, moved to the city in 1979 and worked at a club near an army garrison, and joined the KBS Orchestra in the early 1980s. Newstomato says he took up the instrument at 14. No school of music is named in the 2003 profile, which stresses that he mastered the saxophone on his own.

His first records as a leader came out on Oasis Records in 1991: Super Sax Super Sounds, and Love II (OL-3211), which features the vocalist Park Yoon-cho (박윤초) on "Iyahong Bossa Nova". The release notes name Lee Young-kyung (이영경) as the pianist. The cassette inlays of both credit the singer Kim Jun (김준) as personal producer, and Lee is the tenor saxophonist on Kim's two-LP set 어제.오늘.내일 (1989). Love Sax (Jigu Records, 1993) opens with "밤으로 가는 기차", which the Seoul Shinmun described in April 1994 as the signature music of the television show 밤으로 가는 쇼. On April 30, 1994 he played it with the Seoul Jazz Orchestra, billed as the country's only jazz big band, in the second Spring Jazz Festival at the Seoul Arts Center, hosted by the Korean Jazz Club (한국재즈모임); the paper called him a well-known tenor saxophonist. Passion (BMG Korea, December 1995) was recorded at a Seoul studio in January 1995 with Keita Itoh on bass, Tunoda Ken on drums, Miyoshi Yoshiro on electric guitar and the changgo drummer Jeong Cheolgi.

Alongside the jazz he was a working studio saxophonist. Discogs lists more than sixty appearances on other artists' records between 1988 and 2022, most of them pop, rock and dance albums: Seo Taiji and Boys (the second and fourth albums on Discogs), Kim Gun-mo, Shin Hae-chul's 1991 tour album, Shinchon Blues, Shinhwa and S.E.S. Newstomato says he played on the first four Seo Taiji and Boys albums and their live shows, and on Lee Seung-chul's "안녕이라고 말하지마" and Deux's "여름 안에서". His own releases are all filed as jazz.

The group most closely tied to his name is the Seoul Jazz Quartet (서울재즈쿼텟). By Newstomato's account it grew out of jam sessions in an empty office of the KBS band, with the drummer Kim Hee-hyun (김희현), the bassist Jang Eung-gyu (장응규) and the pianist Yang Jun-ho (양준호) beside him. The article gives both the early 1980s and 1989 to 1993 as its years; it played Pablo in Bangbae-dong and All That Jazz in Itaewon, later Hoam Art Hall, the Sejong Center and the Seoul Arts Center, and toured regionally. It faded as the members' own careers took over, and the original four met again in 2022. A reunion set was announced for June 18, 2022 at Gaucho, a music bar in Hapjeong run by the writer Nam Mu-seong (남무성), and the quartet played Mapo Art Center on August 26, 2022 with Kim Jun and the vocalist Woongsan as guests. On November 19, 2023 it gave a concert at the same hall with Kim Jun and the vocalist Maria Kim as guests, billed by Yonhap as a step toward what the members call K-jazz.

His best known record outside Korea is In New York (Korea Jazz Club, 1997), made with Ron Carter on bass, Kenny Barron on piano, Lewis Nash on drums and Terumasa Hino on trumpet, with Lee on soprano and tenor saxophones. Four standards open it, "Song for My Father", "You Don't Know What Love Is", "Someday My Prince Will Come" and "My One and Only Love", and two pieces built on Korean melodies close it, "On the Way Hometown" (고향 가는 길목에서) and a 12-minute "Bat No Re Variation" on the folk boat song 뱃노래. In 2022 he told Newstomato that at 23 jazz had been a challenge he had to master and that it had become more like a long-term companion.

화두 - The Korean Jazz Standards Vol. 1 (BMG Korea, 1999) turned the same idea into a whole album. Discogs credits him as arranger, saxophonist and producer, with eleven tracks that include "몽금포", "희망가", "진주난봉가", "사노라면" and "꽃밭에서", a gayageum on the first track and the trumpeter and flugelhorn player Juhan Lee on tracks 4 to 6. It was recorded at Nanjang Studio on February 12, 13 and 28, 1999. Streaming services list it under the English title Talking Point.

In 2003 the JoongAng Daily named him as the saxophonist of Asian Spirits, a five-member band of musicians from Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore revived that year by Advanced Music Productions. Its Seoul debut was set for October 1, 2003 at the LG Arts Center, with tickets at 30,000 to 50,000 won and a program that fused jazz with the janggu, the Korean hourglass drum. The paper called him one of Korea's most celebrated jazz artists and noted his work with Ron Carter and an appearance at the Asia Jazz Festival. In the 2003 profile he also said he missed the jazz scene of the 1980s and was wary of "crossover" and "fusion" music.

Oldies & Memories (Kang & Music, 2007), produced by Nam Mu-seong, applies the same approach to English-language pop hits of the 1960s and 1970s such as "Happy Together", "At Seventeen" and "Killing Me Softly with His Song", recorded at Sonic Edge Studio in October and November 2007 with live tracks from Club Yellowjackets on October 16. The pianist Heean Ko (고희안), the bassist 최세열, the drummer 이길종 and the guitarist 최우준 play with him, and the singers Woongsan and Horan (호란) each take a track. In April 2014 he was the first-listed performer at a "Jazz All Stars" concert in Boryeong with Woongsan and the pianist Lee Geon-myeong.

He is still performing; in the 2023 Yonhap interview he said he had spent the past year trying Korean traditional rhythms with Korean traditional musicians and writing pieces with a Korean feel.

The sources describe his work more than his influences, and no interview that lists teachers or heroes turned up. What is on record is a tenor and soprano player who appears in three settings: American standards played with a New York rhythm section on In New York, Korean folk and popular melodies recast as jazz on 화두, and 1970s pop on Oldies & Memories. The New York session with Carter, Barron, Nash and Hino and the quartet's repertoire of "Take Five" and other standards sit on the mainstream side; the boat song 뱃노래, "진주난봉가" and "On the Way Hometown" tie him to the Korean material that Korean press now groups under K-jazz.

In 2023 he told Yonhap that he uses Korean playing techniques on the saxophone and had studied Korean traditional music with other musicians, and he described the exchange between Western and Korean music as a natural result of music's spiritual nature. The 2022 Newstomato report on the quartet's live version of "Bat No Re Variation" says the harmony and melody of "Take Five" gradually turn into an Arirang melody. Discogs credits him on tenor, alto, soprano and sopranino saxophones and on flute, mostly in the pop sessions, and the alto appears on Park Mi-kyung's 1990 album.