Zebra (지브라), billed ZEBRA on its release, is a South Korean trio of the singer JK Kim Dong-wook (JK 김동욱), the double bassist Yoo Jeong-gyun (유정균) and the pianist Jin Han-seo (진한서). It made one album, Pianto, ten English-language jazz standards and popular songs that came out on June 20, 2011. Very little has been published about the group beyond that record and a few television and festival appearances. The documented record is short, and it stops where this paragraph does.

According to the business daily Etoday, the three met through the tvN singing contest Opera Star 2011, in which JK Kim Dong-wook took part, and formed the trio afterwards. Korean Wikipedia gives his birth date as December 11, 1975 and lists his solo albums from 2002 onward; he is a pop, soul and ballad singer who also took part in MBC's I Am a Singer in 2011. Korean Wikipedia describes him as a Korean-Canadian who studied jazz at Humber College in Canada, and the album's liner essay says the same of his jazz vocal studies. Yoo Jeong-gyun, born February 1, 1980 according to Korean Wikipedia, sings and plays bass in the band Serengeti (세렝게티), an Afro soul and funk group formed in 2005 that debuted at the Grand Mint Festival in 2007. Jin Han-seo, born in 1981 by the same source, is a composer and arranger trained in classical music. Korean Wikipedia is the only source for the two musicians' birth dates.

The line-up is unusual. Instead of the usual piano, bass and drums trio, Zebra is voice, double bass and piano with no drummer. The album's liner essay, by Kim Gwang-hyeon (김광현), editor-in-chief of the monthly Jazz People, says the name was one JK Kim Dong-wook had already used for a 2006 digital single, and reads it as black and white: jazz and soul on one side, classical music and standards on the other. Korean Wikipedia also lists the trio as a regular guest on the television programme Lee Sora's Second Propose.

Pianto was made by the label Mulgogi Music (물고기뮤직) and distributed by Sony Music. Its title is Italian for "sorrowful tears." Etoday reported on June 18, 2011 that all ten tracks would be offered free online on June 20, as a thank-you for the encouragement JK Kim Dong-wook received from fans when he left I Am a Singer of his own accord. Genie's album notes add that a physical edition limited to 1,649 copies followed on June 21 and that its proceeds were to go to charity. The liner essay says the trio recorded without a metronome so that the interplay would stay natural, and that "Gentle Rain" is sung as a soft ballad rather than as a bossa nova.

The ten tracks are "Black Orpheus," "Gentle Rain," "Autumn Leaves," "All the Things You Are," "Danny Boy," "Misty," "My Funny Valentine," "Mr. Bojangles," "Bewitched" and "Come Rain or Come Shine." The essay notes that "Danny Boy" and "Mr. Bojangles" are not jazz standards in the strict sense, and that "Bewitched" adds a muted trumpet; the trumpeter is not named.

The group went on stage soon after the album. Korean Wikipedia's page on the Jarasum International Jazz Festival lists "Zebra JK Kim Dong-wook Jazz Trio" on the Jazz Cube stage on October 1, 2011, and a listener's video of that set names Bae Sun-yong as a guest on trumpet. On January 10, 2012 the trio played "Black Orpheus" and the Korean song "Gloomy Letters" on MBC's Beautiful Concert, and MBC's own channel posted both performances. Listener-uploaded videos titled as the Busan Sea Festival's Sea and Jazz stage in 2014 and as an Open Music Concert on June 21, 2015 show the three still playing together; the Open Music Concert clip gives its title as "JK Kim Dong-wook and Zebra." No second album, later release or announcement was found, so whether the trio is still active is not known.

Everything on Pianto is a cover. No original composition by the trio is credited, no arranger is named beyond the group itself, and no recording other than this one album exists, so there is little to say about a personal style beyond what the liner essay describes: a bare line-up, a sung line that sits close to the piano, a walking bass on "Autumn Leaves," and an emphasis on restraint over a busy arrangement. The repertoire is a mix of American songbook standards, a Brazilian film theme, an Irish air and a 1960s folk song.

Whether Zebra counts as a jazz group is a fair question, and the evidence points both ways. For jazz: the repertoire is the core standards book that vocalists learn first; the label called the trio a "jazz project"; Genie files the album under jazz; the editor of a Korean jazz magazine wrote the liner essay and welcomed the record as a rare male standards vocalist's debut in Korea; the trio was booked at the Jarasum International Jazz Festival; and the bassist's own band counts jazz among its genres. Against: Zebra began as a side project of a television-famous pop and soul singer, was released as a free thank-you gift to fans, contains no original music, produced one album and no jazz-scene career afterwards, and the pianist is a classical arranger rather than a working jazz musician. The essay itself acknowledges that albums of standards by popular singers have rarely found a jazz audience in Korea. Zebra is best placed as a vocal jazz standards trio on the border between the pop world and the jazz scene.