Kim Jae-joong
김재중- Name
- Kim Jae-joong
- Born
- 26 January 1986
Wrote the lyrics of all five songs on his debut mini album I.
Their story
Hard rock first
Kim Jae-joong had sung with TVXQ from 2003 and then with JYJ by the time his first solo record arrived: the mini album I, out on 17 January 2013, a rock record. "One Kiss" and the title track "Mine" were hard rock, shaped with Kim Ba-da, the singer of Sinawe, and he wrote the lyrics of all five songs. He said he had always wanted to try hard rock, while staying close to the image his fans had loved from the start. By the end of the year the studio album WWW had followed.
Service and Japan
He enlisted in March 2015, and No.X came out while he was serving. After his discharge at the end of 2016 he released much of his music in Japan. Flawless Love, his first Japanese studio album, topped Oricon's weekly chart in April 2019, and the covers album Love Covers won the Planning Award at the Japan Record Awards. In Korea, the mini album Love Song in 2020 ended a four-year gap.
His own company
In May 2023 he left C-JeS after 14 years and set up iNKODE, where he is chief strategy officer and also produces new artists. Flower Garden marked his 20th year in music in June 2024. That September he and Kim Jun-su became the duo JX, and in May 2025 he went back to rock with the mini album Beauty in Chaos and its lead song "ROCK STAR".
Where he is now
His 2026 began with the Galaxy 1986 fan concerts, named after his birth year, from Seoul in January to Singapore in March. On 20 August he released the single album THE WAVE, his first Korean release in a year and three months, led by "Tonight". The next day he performed on Music Bank for the first time since 2008, and that month he held two concerts at KBS Arena. In October JX opened their tour CORE in Incheon, with dates in Japan, Macau and Taipei to follow until December.