Sun-Mi Hong (홍선미) is a drummer, composer and bandleader who was born in Incheon, South Korea, in 1990 and has lived in Amsterdam since she was about 21. She is billed Sun-Mi Hong, with the hyphen, on her own albums, on Edition Records, Bandcamp, Apple Music and her website; Discogs files her under the spelling SunMi Hong. German Wikipedia gives her birthday as July 15, 1990, while Wikidata also carries the bare year, so the header gives the year only.

Her Korean basis is real in birth, upbringing and early schooling, and her career has been made in Europe. Discogs and her Bandcamp biography say she was born and raised in Incheon, the Saalfelden festival says she was born there, the Kongsberg Jazzfestival says she was born and raised in Korea, and Edition Records and the North Sea Jazz Festival call her a South Korean drummer based in Amsterdam. Wikidata records South Korean citizenship; no source found says whether she has taken another passport. She has said in interviews that she first heard a drum kit at about twelve, that her parents resisted for years, and that she began lessons at seventeen, first with an amateur heavy-metal drummer and then with a professional. In an interview with the Europe Jazz Network she said she won a place at a conservatoire in Seoul but left after a year because the pace felt too fast, and that her teachers then pointed her toward jazz. Studying in New York was out of financial reach, so she chose the Netherlands, and she moved to Amsterdam at about 21, around 2012.

She studied jazz drums at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and completed the master's programme in 2017. Her first recordings were as a sideman in Europe. The Daahoud Salim Quintet's Jazz Getxo and La Llamada (both 2016) and the Slovenian band Kukushai's Fruitile (2017) credit her on drums, and Discogs says her own quintet took second prize at the Getxo International Jazz Competition in Spain in 2017. That year she also released her own first record, First Page, a self-issued album of eight originals with the trumpeter Alistair Payne, the saxophonist Yaniv Nachum, the pianist Young-Woo Lee and the bassist Brodie Jarvie. In 2018 her band won the Dutch Jazz Competition, which led to a place on the Young VIPs Tour of Dutch jazz clubs in 2019 and to British dates through the Going Dutch exchange.

Second Page: A Self-Strewn Portrait followed on ZenneZ Records in 2020, with the single "Self Portrait" released on March 20 and the album on July 3. The quintet by then was Payne on trumpet, Nicolò Ricci on tenor saxophone, Young-Woo Lee on piano and Alessandro Fongaro on bass, with the vocalist Song Yi Jeon (전송이) on two tracks, "KASI: A Thorn" and "KASI: Voice," and Fuensanta Méndez singing on "Dear Tomorrow." The album won an Edison Jazz in the National category in 2021. The Conservatorium van Amsterdam, reporting the award on October 5, 2021, says the jury called the band world class and praised the way the compositions build tension and mix written and free passages. The Dutch broadcaster NTR had already given her a portrait programme in its New Generation series in 2020.

Third Page: Resonance was her first record for the British label Edition Records. It was recorded on December 8 and 9, 2021 and released on November 18, 2022, and it kept the quintet's front line of Payne, Ricci and Fongaro and brought in the Korean pianist Chaerin Im (임채린). The group launched it at the K Music Festival in London's Purcell Room and played it across Europe; German Wikipedia says it appeared at Jazzfest Berlin that year and that Bavarian Radio's classical channel named the album one of its ten best of the year. The review site Making a Scene heard an emotional, mood-shifting record with little conventional swing that asks for concentrated listening. She leads the quintet on its next album as well: Fourth Page: Meaning of a Nest came out on March 14, 2025, with the same five players. Her Bandcamp notes say the album takes up home and community and reflects a decade-long journey from South Korea to Amsterdam, and its eight pieces include the three-part "A Never-Wilting Petal." It was recorded by Cyrille Obermüller at Rockstar Recording Studio in Belgium and produced by Hong and Payne.

The Amsterdam jazz venue Bimhuis commissioned her in 2023 to write a new piece for its REFLEX series, which asks musicians to reflect on the world around them. The result was Invisible Ropes, played by her BIDA Orchestra, a sextet of Payne, the saxophonists Mette Rasmussen and John Dikeman, the pianist Jozef Dumoulin and the bassist John Edwards. Its titles, among them "Brown Door," "Dust Bowl" and "Temple of a Thousand Neon Leggings," come from dreams, according to the Saalfelden festival's note on the project. It was recorded live at the Bimhuis on September 29, 2023 and issued on the Bimhuis's own label on October 4, 2024. German Wikipedia says she presented the orchestra at Jazzfest Berlin that autumn, and the band played the Saalfelden festival in Austria on August 24, 2025.

Alongside her own groups she is a busy sideman. Discogs lists her on records by the guitarist Teis Semey (Throw Stones, Mean Mean Machine and En Masse!), the saxophonist Nicolò Ricci (Bellissimǝ), the composer Sanem Kalfa (Miraculous Layers, recorded live at the Bimhuis in March 2022, and, as Televizyon, Mom! I'm Growing Up, 2025), Payne's live album with the poet Tongo Eisen-Martin, the pianist Kit Downes's Dr. Snap, the bassist Zack Lober's So We Could Live and a duo-saxophone record by Irene Reig and Kika Sprangers on which she also wrote two pieces. On Same Moon in the Same World (2022), by the guitarist Ant Law and the saxophonist Alex Hitchcock, she plays drums on "Chrysalis" and "Vivid," the second with the bassist Linda Oh and the vibraphonist Joel Ross. With Dikeman, the pianist Marta Warelis and the bassist Aaron Lumley she made the free-improvised Old Adam on Turtle Island, recorded live at the Amsterdam art space Splendor on November 28, 2022 and released on Relative Pitch Records in 2025; the Free Jazz Blog praised her full-kit "sonic riptides" and colorful cymbal work. In 2026 the BMC label in Budapest issued Tilia, a quartet record billed to the guitarist Paul Jarret, the saxophonist Philipp Gropper, the bassist Étienne Renard and Hong, with all the music written by Jarret and recorded in Paris on May 10 and 11, 2025. Apple Music also lists a 2026 trio album, Re: Satie Picturing the Invisible, billed to Philipp Rüttgers, Omer Govreen and Hong.

Her standing in the Dutch scene was recognized in 2025. The North Sea Jazz Festival gave her its Paul Acket Award, which goes to an artist who deserves wider recognition, in the Dutch Edition; five jurors each nominated three Dutch musicians under 40 and chose her unanimously, and the juror Frank van Berkel called her drumming idiosyncratic and wrote that she balances structure and improvisation. She received the award at the festival, where her quintet played on July 11, 2025.

A Korean thread runs through the later work. With Song Yi Jeon, the pianist Gee Hye Lee and the daegeum player Hyelim Kim she is a member of the Sori Quartet, four Korean women based in Amsterdam, Berlin, London and Stuttgart who blend Korean traditional music with improvisation. The group played the K Music Festival at Milton Court in London on November 1, 2023, the Akbank Jazz Festival in Istanbul on October 9, 2024, the Music Meeting in Nijmegen, and the Berlin club b-flat in November 2025, according to the festival and club listings. In 2025 the Amsterdam venue Melkweg gave the Dutch premiere of a 29-minute documentary by Dion Bierdrager, Sun-Mi Hong: The Meaning of a Nest, on December 3, 2025. The venue describes it as following her back to South Korea for her first performance there in years, with concert footage and family moments, and she played a short set and took part in a Q&A afterward. She also teaches: she led a masterclass at the Conservatorium Maastricht on February 12, 2026, and her own calendar lists summer schools.

Her playing is built on groove with sudden eruptions. Edition Records describes music of rooted grooves and exhilarating outbursts, the Kongsberg Jazzfestival heard American-inspired quintet music mixed with European impressionism and Korean music, moving from sensitive minimalism to a fierce, expressive style, and the Bimhuis points to catchy melodies, dramatic outbursts, impressionistic sound patterns and unusual time signatures. The North Sea Jazz jury called it modern swing with poetic accents.

She has named her influences in several interviews. The drummers she cites are Brian Blade, Elvin Jones, Roy Haynes, Jack DeJohnette and Tony Williams. Among bands she names Wayne Shorter's quartet and Miles Davis's second quintet, and for composition Ravel, Bartók, Christian Wallumrød and Robert Landfermann. German Wikipedia says Blade's sensitive approach permanently changed hers. Her bigger bands show a second side: the BIDA Orchestra works with the European free-improvisation scene, and Old Adam on Turtle Island is a pair of long free pieces, which is why the Avant-Garde Jazz tag sits beside Post-Bop above.