Sangmin Lee (이상민) is a South Korean drummer, composer and producer who works across jazz, fusion, funk and soul. He grew up in Seoul, was a working professional drummer by seventeen, studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston and then at New York University, led his own groups in New York in the early 2010s, and has been active on the Seoul scene again since about 2020. His birth date and birthplace are not published; the Korean Cultural Service New York says only that he was raised in Seoul. He is billed Sangmin Lee on Discogs, in his New York concert listings and on the 2025 live album that credits him; his own 2021 releases print Lee Sangmin, and Korean press and the Berklee alumni magazine write Lee Sang-min. He is not the singer and producer Lee Sang-min, formerly of the group Roo'ra, who is a different person.

He began on drums in a church, following a brother five years older, and in a 2010 interview named old rock as his schooling: Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, with John Bonham his favourite drummer. The Korean Cultural Service New York says he was performing at fourteen and working as a professional by seventeen. In 1999 he made his recording debut as the drummer of GIGS (긱스), the band that grew out of the Han Sang-won Band of Han Sang-won and Chung Won-young when the singer Lee Juck joined. Its self-titled album came out on Polimedia in November 1999, and a second, GIGS 02, followed in 2000. The 2010 interview feature describes him as barely twenty at the time and not at all cowed by the senior players around him.

After GIGS he became a studio and stage drummer for other Korean musicians. A 2016 Brunch column on his solo album names the band Panic, a record by the pianist Hahn Choong-wan (한충완), the singer Lee Eun-mi, and concerts for Kim Hyun-chul, Kim Dong-ryul and Bobby Kim. His 2011 New York listing adds a tour with the pop star Rain, and a 2015 biography adds Park Jung-hyun, Lee Juck and Lee Sora and speaks of about ten years of session work in Korea.

In 2002 he decided to study in the United States. The EBS Space listing for his 2010 concerts says he completed his course at Berklee and was by then a graduate student at New York University; the Korean Cultural Service New York gives a Berklee bachelor's degree, and a Berklee Today feature on the school's Korean graduates lists him as Lee, Sang-min of the class of 2006. The 2010 interview refers to four years at Berklee; in it he says he took a term or two of lessons with Terri Lyne Carrington, and that Kenny Werner of NYU had praised his playing. EBS also credits him with Berklee's Most Improved Drummer Award in 2004 and says that being an Asian musician playing Western music in Boston left him questioning his own identity, a doubt that shaped his first album. Discogs files a drummer billed Sangmin Lee on two tracks of the saxophonist Nikolay Moiseenko's Perfect World, recorded in June 2007 at Wellspring Sound in Acton, Massachusetts; that Discogs page carries no biography, so the link to this drummer rests on the place, the date and the spelling.

Back in Seoul he won first prize at the Jarasum International Jazz Concours in 2008, a result given both by the EBS listing and by his 2011 New York biography. A 2011 Kyeonggi Ilbo festival preview names him among past winners of the competition, together with the saxophonist Kenji Omae, the pianist Yun Seokcheol, the bassist Kim In-young and the saxophonist Hyunpill Shin. In 2008 and early 2009 he was also the first drummer of the jazz-funk band JSFA, whose debut notes say he left in early 2009 to study in the United States and was replaced by Seungho Kim.

His first record under his own name, Evolution (Mirrorball Music, 2010), came out in 2010. In an interview published on June 4, 2010 he called it an electro-soul record, said he wanted to make a music album rather than a drummer's album, and said that a drummer both producing and composing a record was probably a first in Korea; he also said he planned to return to the United States in early August to finish his jazz studies and then decide whether to stay there or come home. The interview names the tracks "Evolution Comes In", "My Vanished Dream", "Burn It Up" (a five-beat funk piece placed ninth) and "How Could", the closing track, which was cut down to a radio edit. EBS Space presented him on June 1 and 2, 2010 with the guitarist Jung Su-wan (정수완), the bassist Choi In-seong (최인성), the keyboardists Yun Seokcheol and Song Seong-gyeong (송성경) and the vocalist Kang Tae-woo (강태우; the interview spells the singer's name 강태호). The EBS page quotes the Japanese drummer Akira Jimbo praising his technique, sense of rhythm and musicality as a rare talent. The 2016 Brunch column calls him a composing drummer who started as a funk player but played jazz-minded drums on the album.

In New York he led groups under his own name. On March 16, 2011 the Korean Cultural Service New York presented "Sangmin Lee & Friends" in a double bill with the Jisun Choi Jazz Quartet at its gallery; the listing quotes Kenny Werner calling him an exciting new voice on the New York scene and says he had played with Hiram Bullock, Brian McKnight, Joe Lovano and Sam Kininger. On October 1, 2012 the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York held a Chuseok night with the pianist Youngjoo Song at 8 p.m. and "Sangmin Lee & Friends" at 10:30 p.m. On July 17, 2014 the Korea Society hosted a Summer Jazz Night with the Sangmin Lee Group playing his own jazz-fusion compositions, and on April 25, 2015 the Lee Sangmin Group played "My Vanished Dream" in the Main Space of (le) poisson rouge with the trumpeter Igmar Thomas, the saxophonist Jason Arce, the keyboardist BIGYUKI, the guitarist Kappa Tanabe, the bassist Reuben Cainer and Bilal as special guest. The 2015 biography adds the producer Fran Cathcart, Casey Benjamin, Dave Pietro and Leo Genovese to the musicians he had worked with in New York, and lists a master's degree from New York University. Discogs also files a drummer billed Sangmin Lee on Enoch Smith Jr.'s album Misfits (2011) and on the Lower East Side Pipes' Unoccupied Spaces in Public Places (2012, with Cathcart as producer and engineer). A Berklee Today feature of around 2013, "Berklee's Korean Legacy", counted him among the school's Korean jazz graduates working in New York for a time while returning to Seoul for major gigs and recording sessions; it names Youngjoo Song as an occasional collaborator and says he would join Cho Yoon-seung and the bassist Hogyu Hwang on a planned "K-jazz" recording, adding Korean percussion.

By 2020 he was working in Seoul again. On August 7 and 8, 2020 he played free-improvised duo concerts with Cho Yoon-seung, billed JOYEE; the live recordings were released on June 2, 2021 as two volumes, Stellive, Vol. 6: Unprepared, Pt. 1 and Pt. 2, which the two produced together and whose cover prints the names Cho Yoonseung and Lee Sangmin. On May 9, 2021 he put out the single "My Light" on Bandcamp: he wrote it, sings, plays drums, keyboards and synth bass and programmed the trumpet and the sound design, with BIGYUKI, Reuben Cainer, Kappa Tanabe, Jason Arce and the trombonist Scott Flynn from his New York circle, and Cathcart among the recording engineers. In 2022 he was one of two drummers on the keyboardist Nery Kim's EP Melodies of My Heart, and in December 2022 he played The Vine Hall's Winter Jazz Days with the trio of the pianist Jangeun Bae, whom the EBS listing had already named among his Seoul collaborators in 2010. On September 9, 2025 Another Song for MJ, a live album recorded at Understage in Seoul, was released with the pianist Jaehun Kang, the bassist Changmin Jun and a drummer billed Sangmin Lee on an album credited to Myeonghan Yu.

Yamaha Music Korea lists him as one of its drum artists and describes him as a drummer and music director who moves between contemporary jazz, fusion, neo-soul, R&B and pop, and who was the first Korean to appear on the main stage of the Blue Note in New York. His 2011 New York listing says he had taught jazz students at the Seoul Institute of the Arts, Sangmyung University, Howon University and Dongduk University.

Not published or not found: his birth date and birthplace, a complete track list, label catalogue number and any streaming copy of Evolution, and a Discogs listing of his own releases.

His own framing is music first and drums second. In the 2010 interview he said he wanted Evolution to be a music album rather than a showcase for drums, and the 2016 Brunch column puts it as drums in the service of music, not music written for drums. He began as a funk drummer with a classic-rock upbringing, and his jazz is the electric, groove-led kind: electro-soul and funk on Evolution, a "jazz fusion" evening at the Korea Society in 2014, and a 2021 single tagged on Bandcamp with ballad, electronic, experimental, fusion, jazz, hip-hop and rock. Akira Jimbo's description, in the 2015 biography, is a blend of jazz, rock, hip-hop and techno. Brunch names Nikki Glaspie and John Bonham as his reference points.

He also works outside jazz. His debut band GIGS is filed as rock on Discogs, and his session work for Korean pop acts, including a tour with Rain, is a large share of his public credits; the jazz side is carried by his leader projects, his Jarasum prize, his New York band and his duo and trio work with Cho Yoon-seung and Jangeun Bae.