Peggy Gou South Korean DJ With 4.9M Instagram Followers

Peggy Gou, born Kim Min-ji on 3 July 1991 in Incheon, South Korea, is a DJ, singer, songwriter, record producer and fashion designer based in Berlin. She has played at festivals around the world and released her debut album, I Hear You, in 2024.

Early life

Gou started classical piano lessons at the age of eight. When she was 14 her parents sent her to London to study English. She went back to Korea at 18 but returned to London six months later to study fashion at the London College of Fashion. After graduating she worked as London correspondent editor for Harper's Bazaar Korea before relocating to Berlin.

Career

A friend from Korea taught her to DJ in 2009. Her first gig took place at Cirque Le Soir in Soho, and she later played weekly at The Book Club in East London. In 2013 she learned to use the software Ableton Live and began making her own tracks. Her first finished track, "Hungboo", was completed in 2014 and named after the hero of a Korean fairy tale. She played it in Korea for the first time at the opening show of the 2016 Style Icon Awards.

She made her recording debut in January 2016 on Radio Slave's label Rekids with The Art of War Part 1, which included a remix by Galcher Lustwerk. Next came several EPs, among them Seek for Maktoop, which contained "It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)". The title Maktoop comes from an Arabic word for "written" or "destiny". She followed with the EPs Once in 2018 and Moment in April 2019. Once was the first record on which she sang. Her EPs came out on labels including Ninja Tune and Phonica.

In 2017 she went on her first North American tour and made her Boiler Room debut in New York. She was the first Korean DJ to play at Berghain in Berlin. She plays more than a hundred live shows each year and has shared lineups with artists such as Moodymann, The Blessed Madonna and DJ Koze. Her festival appearances include Coachella, Glastonbury, Dekmantel, Primavera Sound and Sónar, as well as Ibiza and Amsterdam Dance Event, and she played at Virgil Abloh's Off-White fashion show.

In 2019 she started her own fashion label, KIRIN, which means giraffe in Korean, with support from Virgil Abloh under the New Guards Group. The following month she founded the independent label Gudu Records, whose name means shoes in Korean. She has said she wanted it to give new artists better opportunities and treatment than she received when starting out. In June she released DJ-Kicks: Peggy Gou, the 69th instalment of the DJ-Kicks mix series from !K7. It was her first appearance on a Billboard chart, reaching number nine on the Dance/Electronic Album Sales chart. In July she released her first music video, for "Starry Night", on Apple Music, directed by Jonas Lindstroem and featuring the actor Yoo Ah-in. It reached YouTube in September.

In June 2021 she released the single "Nabi" with Oh Hyuk of the band Hyukoh, followed by "I Go", which she described as a reimagining of the sounds she grew up loving. In June 2023 she released "(It Goes Like) Nanana" through XL Recordings, built around a sample of a 1998 track by André Tanneberger, and it served as the lead single for I Hear You. Its second single, "I Believe in Love Again", a collaboration with Lenny Kravitz, appeared in November 2023, and "1+1=11" followed in April 2024. I Hear You was released on 7 June 2024 through XL Recordings. In April 2026 she remixed "Where Do We Go" by Ayra Starr, and on 26 June 2026 the two released a joint single, "Wo, man".

Recognition

"It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)" won Best Track at the AIM Independent Music Awards in 2018 and was included on the soundtrack of the video game FIFA 19. In 2019 Forbes included Gou among its Asian leaders and entrepreneurs under the age of 30. She has said in an interview that she prefers to stay out of politics and play for those who want to hear her music. As of 2026 she has about 4.9 million followers on Instagram.