Lee Young-kyung (이영경) is a South Korean jazz pianist who has worked in Seoul since the mid-1980s. Korean newspapers have billed him as a piano prodigy of the late 1980s and as the country's first jazz pianist, and he is also known as a co-founder of the pop-jazz duo Achim and a member of the band Daisy. No album under his own name could be confirmed. His recorded work is as a sideman and band member, and it is set out in the discography. Every release found prints his name in Hangul only, so the Latin spelling used here is a transliteration; a few fan-posted videos spell it Lee Young Kyoung.

His birth date and birthplace are not published in anything found. Hankook Ilbo and JoongAng Ilbo both gave his age as 35 in September 1998, which points to a birth year of 1963 or 1964. He studied piano in the instrumental department of the College of Music at Seoul National University, which Hankook Ilbo says he entered in 1982 with the top practical score. A 2003 newspaper notice and a 2005 biography also name Chugye University for the Arts, which the other sources do not. Hankook Ilbo says that in the practice rooms he mixed classical pieces with improvisation, to the astonishment of other students, and JoongAng Ilbo says he turned to jazz over his professors' objections.

His jazz career began in 1986, when he appeared in a regular concert at the Seoul club Janus, according to both newspapers. In a 2017 interview the pianist Im In-gun said the club's piano chair had been held first by Shin Kwan-woong, who left to lead his own trio, and then by Lee Young-kyung, before it was offered to Im. Lee's earliest recording found is Love II (1991), the tenor saxophonist Lee Jung-sik's album for Oasis Records, whose release notes name him as the pianist. In 1992 Doremi Records issued a live LP of the first Korea Jazz Festival, and Discogs lists him on five of its six tracks: "Take Five" and "Memories Of You" with Lee Dong-ki (이동기), 장응규 and the percussionist Ryu Bok-sung; "Spiritual" and "Caravan" with the saxophonist Kim Soo-yeol, 장응규 and the drummer Choi Se-jin; and "A Night In Tunisia" in a duo with Ham Ki-ho (함기호).

Around the same time he made records in a different register. Achim was formed in 1991 by Lee and the composer and violinist Yoo Jeong-yeon (유정연), who had been schoolmates through to Seoul National University, and its 1992 LP Land Of Morning Calm (Yeh Eum Records) is a pop-jazz set. Lee is credited on piano and synthesizer, and he composed and arranged two of its eight tracks, the instrumentals "아침의 나라" and "내일을 위하여". Korean Wikipedia says he left the duo when he joined Daisy, which Seoul Shinmun described in April 1994 as a jazz-rock group formed by the singer and composer 박광현 with Lee on piano and the New Orleans-born bassist J. C. Clark. Their LP Hello! Miss Daisy appeared that year on Se Eum Media. JoongAng Ilbo says that two years later he formed a hip-hop dance group, 버트헤드. In March 2021 Newstomato quoted Yoo as calling Lee the best jazz pianist in Korea and explaining that Daisy made it hard to ask him back for Achim's second album, which was recorded in Philadelphia in 1994 and released in 2021. The same article says Lee had won high praise from Yosuke Yamashita and played on Kim Hyun-chul's soundtrack for Blue In You and on Yoon Sang's "To You". Discogs lists him on the Blue In You soundtrack (1993), on a 1994 LP by the group Two Two and on a 1998 CD by Elfin Lovers; the last two are filed under the same Hangul name with no further identification.

Japan recurs in the accounts of his career. Seoul Shinmun wrote in 1994 that he had exchanged ideas with top Japanese jazz players before his Korean debut, and JoongAng Ilbo says he played with the trumpeter Terumasa Hino in Osaka in 1991. A biography reposted on a Naver blog in 2005, and repeated on a ticketing site, lists a first Seoul-Tokyo Jazz Train with a Big 4 quartet billed as 조시 가와구찌, a second with a big band billed as 히데오 이찌기와, and an Osaka Jazz Train with a Hino quintet, none of them dated. It also lists appearances with the Seoul Philharmonic and the KBS Symphony Orchestra, and Hankook Ilbo dates the KBS concert to 1993 at the Seoul Arts Center. In 1992, when Masahiko Satoh visited Korea, Lee called on him, and the two began trading standards in clubs. Their duo concert, billed "Two Pianos with Satoh Masahiko", took place on September 16, 1998 at Hoam Art Hall, organized by the Korea Jazz Group. The advance reports describe solo turns and duets: Gershwin's "Summertime" and Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder", pieces by Satoh, and Lee's jazz variations on the folk song "Sin-gosan Taryeong" and the pop song "Magic Castle". No recording of the concert was found.

The later record is thinner. Korean Wikipedia lists Lee's trio among the groups in which the drummer Seo Duk-won worked. In June 2003 the Daegu newspaper Maeil Shinmun announced a recital by him at the jazz cafe Indigo on the 24th. The 2005 biography also lists a first Gosu Jazz concert with Bob Moses, John Lockwood and 민영석, and a Seoul Arts Center concert titled "from Baroque to jazz crossover" with a trio whose other members are named as the bassist 허진호 and the drummer 이종헌; neither is dated. A ticketing-site listing shows a concert billed as 성운 with the Lee Young-kyung Quartet, titled 몽향, on January 8 and 9, 2009. In March 2011 Pressian announced the Lee Young-kyung Trio, with the singer 이부영, for March 19 in a series of nine Korean jazz acts put together by the critic Hwang Deok-ho (황덕호), and called it his first solo concert since 2004. The same ticketing listing places him at the Seoul club Jazzda in 2014. Third-party videos titled with his name in Hangul show a Jazzda trio set from July 11, 2015, a Jazzda quartet on March 28, 2018 and a quintet at Club Evans on January 25, 2019. The 2018 video's description says the Jazzda concerts were monthly, on the fourth Wednesday, and that this one was devoted to Horace Silver's tunes.

Not known: his exact age or birthplace, whether he has released an album of his own, what degrees he holds beyond Seoul National University, and whether he is performing today.

No leader recording could be confirmed, so this section rests on press descriptions and his own comments. Pressian's 2011 preview, which reads like promotional copy, says he combines a classical player's strengths with a jazz player's, and that his range runs from traditional jazz through post-bop to modern creative and avant-garde music. In his 1998 interview Lee said that after years of playing standard combo patterns with bass, drums and saxophone he had begun to find himself predictable, and that he wanted to draw again on his classical training. He called Glenn Gould the only classical pianist who had won him over. Hankook Ilbo adds that he played Liszt's virtuoso pieces already in middle school and treated Mozart sonatas in a pop manner. For the 1998 duo he arranged a folk song and a pop song as jazz variations.

His credits also show a pop-oriented side. Seoul Shinmun noted that he first reached the public through Achim, a pop group, Korean Wikipedia calls the duo pop jazz, and Discogs lists the 1992 LP with jazz, rock, Latin and pop genres and smooth jazz and soft rock styles. His jazz credentials rest on the Janus years, the 1992 Korea Jazz Festival recording, the Japanese concerts, the Satoh duo and his own trio, quartet and quintet work. The video descriptions suggest an interest in the music of Horace Silver, with Wayne Shorter or Debussy named as possible repertoire for the next Jazzda concert.