Yohan Kim (김요한, printed 요한킴 on his SM Entertainment releases) is a South Korean pianist, arranger and producer, born in Seoul in 2002. He is best known in two ways: as a teenage piano prodigy whose videos found a worldwide audience, and, since 2024, as the pianist of the SM Jazz Trio, a group formed inside SM Entertainment's classical and jazz label, SM Classics, that plays jazz versions of K-pop hits. Both his releases and the Korean press call him Yohan Kim in Latin letters, and that is the form used here.

According to his own website, he began picking out melodies by ear on the piano at age three, taught himself from YouTube videos without sheet music, and started posting his playing online at ten. His mother is a classical pianist who gave him lessons; Marie Claire Korea names his father as a music engineer, while W Korea describes a household of two pianist parents. He told W Korea that his mother judged classical piano, with its fixed page, a poor fit because he preferred to improvise, and that he then fell for funk and fusion. In 2015 he appeared on the SBS television programme Gifted Kids (영재 발굴단) as a piano prodigy, and his site says the singer BoA and the musician Cho Kyu-chan praised him there. The same year he became an ambassador for Roland Korea. His site says a video of him, at thirteen, playing Michael Jackson's "Bad" in an arrangement by Peter Bence spread on YouTube and Facebook and was picked up by Billboard's magazine, Ellen DeGeneres's website and Jackson's official channels; the blog Laughing Squid confirms the viral 2015 "Bad" cover and, in 2019, described a sixteen-year-old Kim playing a drum solo on a keyboard. His site describes him as a crossover jazz artist, and in April 2024 Marie Claire Korea ran him in its New Faces series as a jazz pianist. His W Korea interview puts his YouTube following at about 530,000 subscribers in May 2026.

Before SM he was already giving concerts and putting out music on his own. His site lists a first recital at Cosmos Art Hall on October 20, 2017; a date opening for Jeff Lorber Fusion's Prototype tour on October 30, 2018; a piano concert at Maria Callas Hall on March 23, 2019; the concert "Yohan Kim & Friends" at the Sangsang Madang live hall in Hongdae on November 9, 2019; a Roland Boss exclusive concert with a trio, YBY Trio, on February 19, 2020; a concert at Hanam Art Center on July 29, 2020; and a set at the Seoul Forest Jazz Festival on October 10, 2020. The Korean edition of his site also lists Seoul Jazz Week at the Sejong Center on December 28, 2021. Apple Music files his self-released singles "Mixed Dreams" and "Are You Happy" (September 9, 2020) and "Beautiful" (October 5, 2021), and the five-carol Christmas Hymns Jazz 1 (December 22, 2021), under jazz. In 2021 he also appears on the hymn "좋으신 주", credited to the worship collective Art of Worship, Yohan Kim and Annalé (March 19), and on the soundtrack to the web drama Love From Home with the singer Kristel Fulgar (June 11), according to Bugs.

His first release with SM is a jazz version of H.O.T.'s "The Promise" (우리들의 맹세), issued on November 26, 2021 under the billing Yohan Kim & Hogyu "Stiger" Hwang. Discogs credits him on piano and as co-arranger, with the bassist Hogyu Hwang as co-arranger and on electric bass and contrabass, on the same track in the SMTown winter album 2021 Winter SMTown: SMCU Express (December 27, 2021). Discogs lists only that release under his name. Hwang told W Korea that he first noticed Kim years earlier, on television, when the boy improvised a blues in front of music professors, and that the later collaboration came on SM's proposal.

His debut as a solo artist on the label was "hummingbird" (June 7, 2024), a piano, bass and drums piece with a music video that shows him at the piano against a landscape; Bugs lists a teaser (June 6), the video (June 7) and a live video (June 12), and Marie Claire Korea had reported in April 2024 that his debut album at SM Classics was in preparation. On December 12, 2024 SM Classics released "Whiplash (YOHAN KIM Experience)", with a music video; Apple Music files it under K-Pop, and no source found describes its arrangement.

The SM Jazz Trio is the centre of his current work. Its other members are Hogyu Hwang on bass and the drummer Jongkuk Kim (written Jonggook Kim in some Korean press). MusicBrainz dates his membership from its first single, "Supernova (Jazz Ver.)" (aespa), on August 30, 2024. Later came "11:11 (Jazz Ver.)" (March 14, 2025), a version of a Taeyeon song; the trio's own "Prometheus" (March 21, 2025); and, on November 10, 2025, the first album, PINK NOTE, ten jazz versions of SM hits by BoA, EXO, TVXQ, Super Junior, Girls' Generation, SHINee, Red Velvet, NCT Dream, aespa and RIIZE, led by double title tracks "Only One (Jazz Ver.)" and "Growl (Jazz Ver.)". Newsis reported a release showcase on November 14, 2025. W Korea's May 2026 feature says the trio had existed for just over two years, that SM's staff asked that the original song still be recognizable, that Kim sketches the arrangements in MIDI before rehearsals, and that Jongkuk Kim says Kim takes on most of the group's practical work. In that article he says he came to love jazz deeply only after meeting this trio.

The trio's first overseas concerts were two shows at Billboard Live Taipei on March 22, 2026. A Billboard Live Taipei review describes a set that included an original, "SM Blues", the encore "Prometheus", jazz versions of "Only One", "Peek-A-Boo", "Gee", "Supernova", "Hug", "View", "Growl" (reworked in 7/4) and "Miracle", and a second encore, "Humpty Dumpty", played in tribute to Chick Corea. Sports Kyunghyang reported on March 13, 2026 that the third lineup announcement for the Seoul Jazz Festival (May 22 to 24, 2026) included the trio, and W Korea reported that the drummer Taehyun Kim would stand in for Jongkuk Kim there because of a Blue Note project. W Korea also reported that a Tokyo concert was planned for June and an album of the trio's own music for the second half of 2026; no release of that album was found.

Kim's playing, as the sources describe it, is improvisational and arrangement-minded. Marie Claire Korea says his videos recast funk, pop and ballad material in a jazz style, and he told the magazine that the main aim in arranging is to keep the flow of the original while adding his own style. In the trio the same approach is applied to K-pop, where the record company's brief is that listeners must still recognize the song. The Billboard Live Taipei review hears bebop in the spirit of Charlie Parker, the floating harmony of Bill Evans and the influence of Robert Glasper in the trio's original "SM Blues", and Afro-Cuban rhythm in "Peek-A-Boo".

Is this primarily jazz? The case for it: Bugs lists him under jazz, Apple Music files the 2020 to 2024 solo releases, the carol EP and the trio's records under jazz, he appeared at Seoul jazz events in 2020, 2021 and 2026, his own site calls him a crossover jazz artist, and his bandmates are an established jazz bassist and an established New York drummer. The case against: PINK NOTE is made of jazz covers of songs by his record label's own K-pop acts, a large part of his audience came through viral piano videos, "Whiplash (YOHAN KIM Experience)" is filed under K-Pop, and he says his deep engagement with jazz began with this trio, and W Korea presents the trio, formed just over two years before its article, as a new group for all three players. This profile follows the jazz and crossover side of that ledger and says plainly where it is thin.