Ryu Bok Sung (류복성) is a South Korean percussionist, drummer and bandleader, born in 1941 in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, and one of the first-generation musicians who built Korean jazz out of the US Eighth Army clubs of the late 1950s. He plays bongos, congas and drum kit, and he is the Latin percussion specialist of that generation. The Seoul Shinmun called him a living witness of Korean jazz history in 2010 and a master of percussion and jazz in 2005. Korean newspapers sometimes print his surname as 유 (Yu Bok-sung), and Discogs files both 류복성 and 유복성 as spellings of the same name; his own English-language releases bill him as Ryu Bok Sung. Most Koreans know him for something else: the bongo-driven theme of the MBC police drama Sujaban (수사반장, roughly "the chief detective"), which ran from 1971 to 1989 and which Korean Wikipedia credits to him as the original source of its theme.

He grew up in a farming village near Yongin and, by his own telling to the Seoul Shinmun, followed the farmers' percussion bands around the neighbourhood from the age of five. In middle school he heard a Miles Davis Quintet recording of "Straight, No Chaser" on the American Forces Korea Network radio and decided on jazz. He moved to Seoul and played in the school band at Dongbuk High School, and in 1958 he joined the US Eighth Army show circuit, starting as a band boy who carried drums and was not taught to play. A bandleader lent him a Buddy Rich drum instruction book, which he copied out by hand into a staff-paper notebook before practising for hours every day. After a national drum contest he met the bandleader Lee Bong-jo, and from 1961 he played in his orchestra for five years. The chronology printed with the 2005 Seoul Shinmun profile adds that in 1966 he played with the saxophonist and composer Gil Ok-yun's Jazz All Stars.

In 1967 the Walkerhill Hotel in Seoul recruited a jazz drummer for its Hilltop Bar, a room described as Korea's first jazz club. There he met the saxophonist Jung Sung-jo, and the Seoul Shinmun says the two formed Ryu Bok-sung and the Jazz Messengers. In 1968, according to the same chronology, he studied Latin percussion with a visiting American percussionist whom the paper names in Korean as 아기콜론, and Money Today puts that study at six months. That year a band he led entered the national light-music contest at Citizens' Hall (now Sejong Center) as the only jazz act and was eliminated in the first round, an episode he still tells with good humour. He decided that the way to reach Korean listeners was to mix Latin rhythms into jazz, and that idea has run through his career since.

Through the 1970s he made his living in the studios and on television. Discogs credits him on congas on the 1971 album Go Go Sound Vol. 1 by the guitarist Kim Hee-gap, and the Seoul Shinmun says he played percussion on pop hits by Nami and Song Dae-gwan before quarrelling with engineers and arrangers and walking away from session work. In 1972 Sung Eum issued the Latin album 안개낀 부두 / 아! 나는 under the name 유복성과 신호등 (also billed as Latin Koreana and Ryu Bok-Sung & The Traffic Lights), and in March 1978 Hit Records released 혼자 걷는 명동길 (Walking Alone on Myeongdong Street), whose title piece is a song he was still playing in concert decades later. He also led the Bongo Orchestra on two 1980 Hyundai Records LPs, Demonstration 오디오 TEST판 and Disco! 나이트크럽, billed with Jung Sung-jo, who is credited with an arrangement on the first. Discogs files all of this under Latin, funk, disco and easy listening, not jazz, and that side of his output is substantial.

The jazz records of the same years are fewer. The 2018 reissue of Lee Pan-geun's 1978 quintet session, first issued in 1979 and now titled Plays Arirang & Other Assorted Classics, credits him on percussion on Discogs; the drummer on it is Choi Se-jin, the pianist is Son Soo-gil (listed there as Sohn Soo-Kil) and the trumpeter is Kang Dae-gwan. In 1986 Oasis Records issued 민속악과 째즈 (Folk Music and Jazz), two side-long pieces, "대금과 봉고" and "사물과 섹소폰", in which his bongos sit beside Gil Ok-yun on saxophone, Lee Saeng-kang on the bamboo flute daegeum and Lee Sung-jin on the hourglass drum janggu. In 1987 he led the Ryu Bok Sung All Stars with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra on '88 Jazz Masters, with the pianist Shin Kwan-woong, the tenor saxophonist Kim Soo-yeol, the bassist Ham Ki-ho and the drummer Kim Hee-hyun. It holds his own 17 minute piece "Mut (Charm)", Paul Desmond's "Take Five" and "Tahyang-sari". The Seoul Shinmun says he represented Korea with Gil Ok-yun at the Han River International Jazz Festival in 1988.

From the 1990s he worked as an organiser. He planned and directed the first Korea Jazz Festival (대한민국 재즈페스티벌) in 1992, the Summer Jazz Festival in 1997 and a farewell jazz concert in 1999, and Doremi Records issued the festival on two LPs, with him credited on percussion on the second. He lectured at universities and military bands from 2000, held a 45th anniversary jazz concert in August 2003 at the Youngsan Art Hall in Yeouido with the saxophonist Lee Jung-sik and the vocalists Malo and Woongsan, and that year opened his own Drum & Percussion School in Gui-dong, Seoul, where, at one time, about fifty students were enrolled. In 2005 he played every Thursday night at a jazz cafe in Daehangno with his Latin Jazz All Stars.

Music Zoo Entertainment issued his debut 50th anniversary album, the double CD Jazz Concert Live At Jazz Park, together with a single CD, Live In Seoul, both dated November 12, 2007 on Discogs. The Seoul Shinmun, which dates the CD and DVD of the anniversary concert to June 2009, names Malo, the saxophonist Son Sung-jae and the trumpeter Jung Gwang-jin among the players. In November 2007 the Korea Times listed his Latin Jazz All Stars for two nights, November 15 and 22, at a Seoul art hall.

In 2010 Nam Mu-seong's documentary Bravo! Jazz Life, released on December 16, lists him in its main cast, alongside Kang Dae-gwan, Kim Jun, Choi Sun-bae, Lee Pan-geun, Kim Soo-yeol, Lee Dong-ki, Park Seong-yeon, Shin Kwan-woong and Im Heon-su. On January 28, 2011 he was on drums and bongos at the Seoul Arts Center concert that recreated its soundtrack, with Malo and Lee Jung-sik as guests. In April 2013 the Korean Jazz First Generation Band, with him on percussion, was announced for a UNESCO International Jazz Day concert beside Nah Youn-sun. In an interview published in June 2014, Money Today announced his 57th anniversary Ryu Bok-sung Jazz Concert for June 15 at Blue Square in Hannam-dong, Seoul, with the pianist Kim Kwang-min, Malo, Son Sung-jae and Jung Gwang-jin and a programme that included "Take Five" and "Besame Mucho". His long-held wish, he told the interviewer, is to build a jazz museum.

A November 5, 2022 night at the Jazz Club Paradise Lost in Seoul's Ikseon-dong was billed as the Ryu Bok Sung Jazz All Stars, with 키미 on percussion, 임보라 on piano, 이정윤 on drums, 이준삼 on bass and 김도형 on saxophone. In December 2025 the broadcaster OBS posted a ten minute segment on the story behind the Sujaban theme in its series on Korean legends.

His playing is built on Latin rhythm. He has said that the way he found to make jazz suit Korean listeners was to add Latin rhythms, and the repertoire on his live records shows it: "Take Five", "Cherokee", "Agua de Beber", "One Note Samba", "Quizas Quizas Quizas", "Moliendo Cafe" and "Song for Tito" sit beside his own pieces "Mut", "Come On Jazz Soul" and "Bok-Sung Theme". Bongos and congas lead, with the drum kit as a second voice, and his concerts have long been known for showmanship, including drum battles with younger drummers.

The influences he names are the AFKN radio broadcasts of his school years, the Miles Davis Quintet of the 1950s, Buddy Rich's drum book and the Eighth Army bandstands where he served his apprenticeship. His earliest musical memories are of the farmers' percussion bands of Yongin, and his 1986 record with the daegeum player Lee Saeng-kang is an early meeting of bongos with Korean traditional instruments.

His identity is mixed. A good deal of his recorded output is Latin pop, funk and disco, and the television theme is the work the public knows best. The jazz case rests on the albums of 1986, 1987 and 2007, his festival organising, the first-generation lineups of the 2010s, and the way the Korean press and his fellow musicians describe him: as a jazz percussionist first.