The yellow-pigmented, Gram-stain-negative, rod-shaped bacterium KJ1R5(T) was isolated from the root of a pepper plant grown in a field in Kwangju, Korea. Strain KJ1R5(T) was characterized by physiological, biochemical, and molecular genetic analyses. Phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain KJ1R5(T) was most closely related to members of the genus Chryseobacterium, and that the strain exhibited the highest similarities with type strains of Chryseobacterium vrystaatense (97.0 %) and Chryseobacterium rhizosphaerae (97.1 %). DNA-DNA hybridization reassociation values between strain KJ1R5(T) and type strains of C. vrystaatense KACC 11675(T) and C. rhizosphaerae KACC 14918(T) were 46.9 and 38.4 %, respectively. The DNA G+C content of KJ1R5(T) is 40.2 mol%. The predominant respiratory quinone of KJ1R5(T) was menaquinone MK-6; major cellular fatty acids were iso-C15 : 0, summed feature 3 (C16 : 1ω7c and/or C16 : 1ω6c), iso-C17 : 1ω9c, and iso-C17 : 0 3-OH. On the basis of these phenotypic and genotypic characteristics, the strain significantly differed from representative strains belonging to the genus Chryseobacterium. Thus, we propose that strain KJ1R5(T) represents a novel species of the genus Chryseobacterium, named Chryseobacterium kwangjuense sp. nov. The type strain is KJ1R5(T) (= KACC 13029(T) = JCM 15904(T)).