Kun-Woo Paik was born March 10, 1946, in Seoul, South Korea, and gave his first concert at age ten with the Korean National Orchestra. He studied at the Juilliard School in New York, and in London and Italy, under teachers including Rosina Lhévinne, Ilona Kabos, Guido Agosti, and Wilhelm Kempff, going on to perform with major orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Paik won the Naumburg International Piano Competition in 1971 and was a Busoni International Piano Competition laureate; he served as Artistic Director of the Emerald Coast Music Festival in Dinard, France (1993-2014). His extensive discography, including complete Beethoven piano sonata cycles and Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff concertos, has earned multiple Diapason d’Or awards, and he holds honors including France’s Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres (2000) and Korea’s Order of Cultural Merit (2010).