소개 Ebstar

Ebenezer Tarubinga, known professionally as Ebstar and by his Korean name 에벤, is a Zimbabwean record producer, macro influencer, and artificial intelligence researcher based in Seoul, South Korea. Born in Bulawayo, he relocated to South Korea in 2022 as the sole Zimbabwean recipient of the Global Korea Scholarship that year.

Ebstar's productions are rooted in piano house, drawing on dance-pop, Amapiano, and deep house. His music has accumulated over five million streams across platforms, with several singles charting on Spotify's national daily charts. "sexual pt. I (ecstasy)" reached number nine in Estonia, "The Breakup Anthem" peaked at number forty-five in South Korea, and "what does it mean to be happy?" climbed to number thirty-seven in Luxembourg. Within a year of his debut, he was ranked 290th on SkioMusic's World Producer Chart. He has released three studio albums, the most recent being Maknaebe (Deluxe Version) in 2024 alongside RATSBE, a reflective and emotionally layered work that he has described as his most personal project. In an interview with Yonhap News Agency, he explained the philosophy underpinning his sound: that within his upbeat productions, there are messages of love and hope, born from a wish for everyone to overcome their own adversities.

In 2023, he founded The ESØTËRIC Ones, an independent record label headquartered in Seoul. The label operates across six countries with more than fifteen artists on its roster and has released over thirty singles, accumulating more than two million streams. The name reflects a deliberate creative philosophy: music made with specificity and intention, designed to find its audience rather than chase one.

Ebstar is also one of the most recognized foreign public figures in South Korea. He has built a following of over 200,000 across social media platforms, with content reaching 184 countries and generating more than fifteen million views. He has partnered with over fifty brands. His government-affiliated cultural roles have included serving as a Global SeoulMate for the Seoul Tourism Organisation, a Korea Allimi for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and an Outlookie Cultural Influencer for KOFICE under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. In 2025, he was appointed a GINCON Committee Member affiliated with South Korea's National Assembly. The previous year, he was inducted into Forbes BLK and attended the Korea-Africa Summit, where he met the Zimbabwean President, a moment that placed him at the visible intersection of the two countries that have shaped his life and career.

Before and throughout all of this, Ebstar was building a parallel career in artificial intelligence research. He completed his Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence at Korea University under the supervision of IEEE Fellow Professor Seong-Whan Lee, specializing in computer vision. His research contributions include "CW-BASS," a first-author paper accepted at the IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2025), and "FARCLUSS," published in Neural Networks, an Elsevier journal. Both papers address problems in segmentation, depth estimation, and dense matching. He now works as an AI Research Engineer building production computer vision systems for smart city infrastructure.

What distinguishes Ebstar's trajectory is not simply the breadth of his work but the fact that each domain operates at a serious level. His research publishes in top-tier venues. His music charts internationally. His public platform carries institutional weight. Rather than diluting one pursuit to make room for another, he has constructed a career where the analytical precision of AI research, the emotional architecture of music production, and the cultural reach of public influence all reinforce one another. It is this convergence that has made him a singular figure bridging Africa and East Asia across technology, creativity, and public diplomacy.