Biography

28.03.1988~
Poet, Jazz musician and Actress - Performer from South Korea

Lina Lee has been immersed in music since childhood, playing drums, piano, and violin. She later pursued musical theatre at both undergraduate and graduate levels, graduating Summa Cum Laude.
 

Her professional acting career began with the role of Helena—a daughter with intellectual disabilities—in an adaptation of Autumn Sonata by Ingmar Bergman, one of the most revered directors of the 20th century. For her powerful performance, she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in South Korea’s Audience Choice Awards.
 

This debut became a turning point. Portraying a character with both intellectual disabilities and polio prompted her to explore the relationship between physical movement and sound. She later collaborated with Maureen Fleming, the acclaimed American avant-garde artist and master of Japanese Butoh, on interdisciplinary research in voice and embodied movement.

Her growing interest in the voice and body led her to become a founding member of the Korean Vocology Association. She engaged in volunteer work and educational initiatives to support people experiencing voice loss, while also contributing to academic research in musical theatre, including presentations on techniques for overcoming pitch breaks.
 

Since 2010, Lina has continued to work as an actress in independent film, theatre, and musicals—while quietly writing poetry behind the scenes to express what remained unspoken on stage. In 2018, she won Korea’s most prestigious poetry competition, hosted by Chosun Ilbo. She has since been active as a poet, forming a literary collective and organizing charity readings for women’s rights, gender equality, and social justice. In 2019, she was awarded a creative grant from the Daesan Foundation—often referred to as Korea’s Medici family—in recognition of the depth and quality of her poetry. Her debut collection was published by MoonJi Publishing, the country’s most respected poetry press, and became a seasonal bestseller. In 2025, she received the Balgyeon Literary Award for her second collection, [My Love Begins], from Balgyeon, Korea’s leading poetry journal.
 

Since 2022, Lina has been based in the Netherlands, where she continues her journey as an interdisciplinary artist. Her current work weaves together jazz, Gugak (Korean traditional music), poetry, and movement—seeking a form of music that is at once poetic, authentic, and deeply reflective of her inner self.
 

She believes that when the historical and spiritual roots of Korea meet the penetrating insight of poetry and the lived immediacy of jazz, we are brought closer to the most immutable truths of life
—truths felt and known through our being itself.