Who are you?

My name is Esmin (Sungmin) Kim, and I relocated to Berlin. I was born in Seoul, South Korea, and moved to Berlin in order to fully deep dive into the core of sub culture and music tech. 

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

What is your personal and professional background?

I see myself as an ‘inventor’ because I’ve defined my role as such since 1989, reminding myself about it always. I’ve been entitled to various job titles at the best companies such as JYP Entertainment and Samsung Electronics HQ, as a Senior UX Designer / Product manager in Music applications including Samsung Music, Sound camp. But in fact, the essence of all these titles are just derived from the approach taken by the INVENTOR. When presented with a problem, the inventor’s approach is more sensitive than others and tends to offer the most creative solution.

 

In my childhood, I was greatly inspired by the skateboard culture. My friends and I organized punk bands and made also hip-hop musics with a 4-track to 8-track cassette MTR. My first album with my friends was released when we were only 15–16 years old, under the name ‘Shisha Heelflip Karaoke Jam Session’ through the Korean label ‘Stoneages.’ It was much harder to release an album through labels than compared to the current music industry. The experience of accomplishment from our first album resulted in all the friends who participated to become either famous artists or running their own music companies.

 

Later, I worked as a featured editor for Korean magazines in music, film, fashions, and wrote various articles and reviews. At this time, I used the name ‘Magazine King’ or ‘MGZK’ myself. It means ‘King of Magazine’ or in Japanese, ‘Magazine King,’ I named it to write extremely cheeky and vitriolic critics.

 

In 2007, I released three albums through PSA Japan, intending to make music also to show my inventions live, including robots, cassette DJing systems, and more. 

​

As an official full-time position, I joined as the creative team lead at JYP Entertainment, which is the top K-POP label. After that, I worked for Samsung Electronics HQ as a Senior UX designer, a product manager of Music apps and content. Yes, I founded the project ‘Soundcamp’ which is the mobile DAW at Samsung, then I could meet and talk to the person from the real music-tech industry through the meetings, NAAM, SXSW, so on. I realized that music + technology is the field which I could spend all rest of my life.

​

What about your family?

Writing is in our family DNA; some of my family are well known novelists in Korea. I grew up with four older sisters within a robust writing environment. By the way one day last year, I asked my wife.

 

‘Hey, Shall we move to Berlin?’

‘What’s in there?’

‘Music technology and amazing electronic music scenes I haven’t experienced yet, I guess.’

‘Cool, is Berlin in Italy?’

‘What’s wrong with you? :(