Min Youngseok (민영석) is a South Korean jazz guitarist and composer, born on March 14, 1967. His birthplace is not published; a Berklee recital program of 1996 lists him as from Seoul. Discogs transcribes his credit on his 2010 album as Min Youngseok, which is the form used here. Other spellings are in circulation: Youngseok Min in Berklee's records, Young Seok Min in a 2023 concert listing, and Min Young Seok on his own YouTube channel.

He went to Hansung High School and took a degree in geology at Yonsei University, according to Korean Wikipedia, before deciding to study jazz after hearing the playing of the guitarist Mick Goodrick. Korean Wikipedia and a December 2025 article in the newspaper New Daily say he then went to the United States, where he studied jazz performance at the Berklee College of Music and took a master's degree in contemporary improvisation at the New England Conservatory. Korean Wikipedia names Goodrick, John Abercrombie, George Russell and Ran Blake as teachers he studied with for a long time. His senior guitar recital at Berklee, for the Bachelor of Music degree, took place on March 14, 1996 (his 29th birthday). The printed program lists the saxophonist Ricardo Cavalli of Buenos Aires, the faculty guitarist David Newsam, the bassist Stefan Held of Graz and the drummer Martin Bernert of Sacramento beside him, and music by Dave Brubeck, Steve Swallow, Thad Jones, Miles Davis and Bill Frisell.

Korean Wikipedia dates his professional career from 1994 and says he formed a group called Kaleidoscope with Bernert and Held, which played in Boston, in Tokyo and at the War Memorial of Korea in Seoul; the Berklee program shows the same two musicians as his rhythm section two years later. It adds that until 2009 he worked in New York and Boston in a trio with the bassist John Lockwood and the drummer Austin McMahon. New Daily's December 2025 article says he has played with Goodrick, Abercrombie, Ran Blake and Dave Liebman in Boston, New York, Berlin and Tokyo; that wording comes from a concert announcement and no recording with Liebman was found.

He was already appearing in Seoul in this period. In June 2001 the Hankook Ilbo announced the first "Gosu" (master) jazz concert, put on by the Seoul club Hot House at the KEPCO Artspul Center on June 20. The quartet was the American drummer Bob Moses, visiting Korea for the first time, John Lockwood on bass, the pianist Lee Young-kyung and Min, then 34, who told the paper that the concert would unfold as a conversation in musical language with the audience. The paper names two of his own pieces on the program, "Rain Song" and an untitled work, and says they alternate impressionistic melody with atonal lines. A 2005 biography of Lee Young-kyung lists the same concert. His first album, Contour Line, followed in 2004. A column in Jeju Today by the guitarist Yang Jin-woo, a former student, describes it as a solo record made by overdubbing one guitar, planned as the first release of a label started by the Hot House club, and says it could not be found on streaming sites or even in used-record shops by 2022.

Korean Wikipedia puts his return to Korea in 2009. In 2010 he released The Frontline of Jazz with a trio called The Frontline, formed in 2008 with the electric bassist Yang Young-ho and the drummer Nam Kwang-hyun. It came out on Ponycanyon Korea on March 2, 2010; the Yonhap news agency reported it on March 22 and announced a release concert for April 8 at the KT&G Sangsang Madang live hall in the Hongdae district of Seoul. Third-party videos of the trio at the Seoul club King of Blues were posted to YouTube in 2011.

Since then his public profile has been as a performer and a teacher. His YouTube channel, "Min Young Seok - Jazz guitar, 민영석의 재즈스터디", carries lessons for guitarists from beginner to advanced level as well as performances, among them "Falling Grace" with the vocalist Jeong Ju-hye (정주혜). On February 13, 2023 the concert series The House Concert streamed a lecture concert by Min, Jeong and the pianist Park Chang-soo (박창수). The listing says it was based on a book titled What Is Music? (음악이란 무엇인가) written by Jeong and Min, with Park as interlocutor. They played "New Form," the opening piece of The Frontline of Jazz, which the listing dates to 2010 and credits to Min, and "Paco," credited to Jeong. In December 2025 New Daily announced what it called his first small-theater concert, with Jeong as guest, for December 30 at the Nine-Jin Hall in the Daehangno district of Seoul.

The Yonhap announcement of The Frontline of Jazz describes a trio that uses chromatic extensions of jazz harmony, polyrhythm, irregular meters and Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone method in improvisation, and that places itself against both imitation of Western jazz and so-called Korean jazz. Discogs files the album under avant-garde jazz. The Hankook Ilbo's 2001 preview likewise stresses atonal lines combined with funk-like rhythmic freedom, and a few years later Yang Jin-woo heard in Contour Line a Goodrick-like modern sound with odd meters, slide guitar on the opening piece, and a thin, delicate tone from a Klein guitar rather than the thick sound of a hollow-body, played with the right-hand thumbnail and fingers.

His named influences are the guitarists he studied with or copied. Goodrick is the one he credits with his decision to study jazz, and Yang Jin-woo writes that Min took in Abercrombie and Liebman as well. His teaching channel carries lesson series on solo guitar, comping and triadic chromatic approaches.