Phil Yoon (필윤; Korean Wikipedia gives his birth name as 윤상필, Yoon Sang-pil) is a jazz drummer born in 1967 in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul. He studied at the Berklee College of Music and the Longy School of Music in Boston, worked in New York in the early and mid 2000s, and has been based in Korea since 2007. His releases, Discogs and the streaming services all bill him as Phil Yoon. He has led three albums under his own name, E.J. (Homage to Elvin Jones) (2007), Reminiscences of Mom (2012) and The Winds from Cuba (2019), co-leads the quartet Straight Ahead, and is also an author, a television presenter and a university teacher.

He taught himself to play drums from the third year of middle school, according to a 2019 profile in the Hankyoreh. After Pyeongtaek High School he studied English literature at Soonchunhyang University and, an admirer of Ernest Hemingway, wrote his degree thesis on Hemingway's work. His professional start was in rock: Korean Wikipedia and an EBS broadcast notice put his debut in 1987 as the drummer of a heavy metal band called Idea (이데아). The Hankyoreh says he recorded the band's first album in 1988 and then entered military service, where he learned that Berklee existed. After his discharge he joined Kim Chang-nam and Dosiro (김창남과 도시로), a pop band formed by Kim Chang-nam, formerly of the group Dosiaideul (도시아이들), which had a hit with 선녀와 나뭇꾼 and kept him busy with television and club work until he chose to leave for the United States rather than stay on.

In 1994 he enrolled at Berklee. By his own account he did not yet know what jazz was; he watched other students play rhythms he had never heard and fell for bebop and hard bop. He went on to the Longy graduate school. Korean Wikipedia lists his teachers as Skip Hadden, Kenwood Dennard, Bob Gullotti, the trumpeter 제리 씨코 and George Garzone, and says he made his professional jazz debut in 1998, still a Berklee student, in the band of that trumpeter. The same article places him in New York from 2003 to 2006 and names Jed Levy, Mark Gross, David Berkman, Toru Dodo and Greg Murphy among the players he worked with there; those names rest on that article alone. A 2021 Kyunghyang Shinmun notice confirms that he was active in New York until the middle of the 2000s and that he came home in 2007 with a stated aim of recording about ten albums in Korea.

The first of them, E.J. (Homage to Elvin Jones), appeared in 2007. Korean Wikipedia says it was made with the saxophonist Donny McCaslin, the pianist George Colligan and the bassist Johannes Weidenmueller, and credits the label EMI. Its eight tracks mix standards, among them "Nardis" and "Softly as in a Morning Sunrise", with his own pieces and with two Korean folk songs, "Jindo Arirang" and "Han Obaengnyeon". The Hankyoreh classes his first two albums as post-bop, firmly rooted in tradition but looking toward modern jazz, and says both were well reviewed. The second, Reminiscences of Mom (2012), was made with the same quartet, and Discogs credits McCaslin on saxophone, Colligan on piano, Weidenmueller on bass and Yoon on drums. Korean Wikipedia says it recalls his mother, who had died the previous year.

Around the albums he built a public profile in Korea. Korean Wikipedia says he starred in a four-part jazz documentary for the cable channel Sky Travel in 2012, wrote the travel and music essay book Jazz and the City (Mother Books, 2012; English and Korean e-book editions followed in 2013), sat as a judge on the KBS talent show Top Band 2, and in 2013 planned, wrote and hosted a ten-part live jazz series on Arte TV called Phil Yoon's Jazz Story. The same article says he is general director of the Yongin Jazz Festival. Yeongnam Ilbo introduced him in October 2023 as a director of the Korean Jazz Association, and in November 2024 the Yongin Cultural Foundation billed him as host and performer, with his group, of its concert "Jazz and the Yongin". He has taught as an adjunct at Yonsei, Sangmyung and Jeonju universities and, per Korean Wikipedia, at Pyeongtaek University; a 2015 Gyeonggi notice described him as an adjunct at the Sangmyung University graduate school and Baekseok University. The Yongin notice calls him an official endorser of Anatolian Cymbals and Aquarian Drumheads.

The Winds from Cuba (2019) was his first album in seven years and a deliberate change of direction. He told Dong-A Ilbo that it was a brighter, more popular record than the artistically minded Reminiscences of Mom, and the Hankyoreh describes an album of nine vocal songs on Cuban rhythms such as son, montuno, mambo and guaracha. He had never been to Cuba; the ideas came from places he had visited, among them Palawan in the Philippines, Okinawa, Boston, New Orleans and Jeju, and the title pays tribute to Hemingway. It also includes arrangements of "Bet Nori", "About 500 Years" and "Jindo Arirang". Dong-A reported a showcase at the Mullae Jazz IN club in Seoul on July 7, 2019, where he planned to play all nine pieces, which he wrote and produced himself. In April 2021 the EBS programme Space Gonggam gave him an episode, on which he played the title track and "Bet Nori" and premiered a new piece, "Pray On A Rope", which the broadcast notice says he wrote on the spot after the invitation arrived.

The Cuban title song found a second life through the singer Joo Hyun-mi (주현미), a well known trot vocalist. The two had begun working together about five years earlier, on a touring programme of regional arts centres, and in early 2020 Yoon suggested a jazz record. In June 2021 the Hankyoreh reported the first single of the Joo Hyun-mi Jazz Project, "Winds from Cuba", with Yoon as producer. Further singles followed on streaming services through 2021 and into 2022, and the project was billed for live dates: a December 2021 concert in Yeoju, the eve of the 2023 Jarasum International Jazz Festival, and a December 2023 concert in Jangseong.

Straight Ahead is his co-led quartet of Berklee-trained Korean players. Korean Wikipedia lists its albums as Introducing S.A. (2011, Warner) and New Time (2020). New Time reached streaming services on November 30, 2020, and a December 2020 report says the double bassist Song Woo-young, a professor at Korea Nazarene University, played on it and took part in its arrangements and production. He also appears as a guest drummer with other Korean jazz leaders, among them the pianist Yoonchan Kwak, who was announced with him and the bassist Heo Jin-ho (허진호) for a May 2011 concert in Pyeongtaek.

Since 2022 he has released a series of singles: "Pray On A Rope" (February 2022), "Seagull & Drone" (March), "Summer Dance" (July), "Flight Seoul To North Sumatra" (August), "New Orleans Blues" (October) and "Climbing In Storm" (December). On May 1, 2026 all six were issued together on one release titled Pray On A Rope. He leads his own quartet, billed as the Phil Yoon Group, Band or Quartet; it was announced for the 2023 Daegu International Jazz Festival, and he played the 2018 edition.

His playing is straight-ahead modern jazz with a bebop and hard bop foundation. Korean Wikipedia names Max Roach, Elvin Jones, Roy Haynes and Tony Williams as the senior drummers he drew on most and adds the new traditionalism associated with Wynton Marsalis. His first album was an explicit homage to Elvin Jones, and the article describes the Phil Yoon Group's repertoire as rhythmic, with complicated changing and mixed meters. He recasts well known pieces, including Miles Davis's "Nardis", in odd time signatures.

Korean folk songs are a recurring thread: "Jindo Arirang" is on both E.J. and The Winds from Cuba, "Han Obaengnyeon" on the first, "About 500 Years" and "Bet Nori" on the third. The Hankyoreh quotes him on wanting to express Korean emotion through jazz, and Korean Wikipedia adds that he translates the rhythms of the samulnori percussion instruments (kkwaenggwari, jing, janggu and buk) onto drums and cymbals in improvisations. On record and on stage he is said to favor vintage Gretsch drums of the 1950s and 1960s.

Jazz is clearly his main identity, though he comes to it from rock and pop. His early years were spent in a metal band and a pop group, and his public work includes television and a book. His recorded output since returning to Korea is jazz, from the post-bop quartet albums to the Latin-tinged The Winds from Cuba, and he is a board member of the Korean Jazz Association.