Does the Western Art Market Understand Seoul?

The art world has swapped the beach for Frieze Seoul in Korea, the first major fair of the post-summer art-fair rush. When it launched in 2022, the global art market was riding a post-pandemic wave, hitting $67.8 billion in sales, its second-highest annual total to date.

Today, the mood is less buoyant. The market has been through the mire and has since fallen by around 8% from its recent peak, despite showing signs of recovery. It’s no surprise, then, that the headlines coming out of Frieze Seoul are peppered with words like “cautious” and “uncertain”.

Still, the fair, which runs until Saturday, recorded some big opening-day sales. Thaddaeus Ropac sold an Adrian Ghenie for €1.1 million and an Antony Gormley sculpture for £750,000, while Seoul’s Kukje Gallery sold a Yoo Youngkuk painting for roughly $1.6 million. But don’t let the big numbers fool you. The post-pandemic boom in Seoul’s art market has subsided, despite the arrival or expansion of international galleries including Pace, Perrotin, Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth and David Zwirner.

At Frieze, galleries are responding with lower prices, younger artists and more accessible works. The market is trying to find its feet after the frenzy of the glory years. Almine Rech, the Paris-based dealer exhibiting at the fair, tells The Art Journal that she has noticed the restraint among dealers. “We brought works ranging from $100,000 to $1 million, including several Korean artists,” she says. “We didn’t want the prices to be too high.”

What is less clear is whether the years of investment in Seoul have been matched by a deeper understanding of the city itself.

Kyu Jin Hwang, executive director of Thaddaeus Ropac in Seoul, says the Western art world is only now beginning to move beyond viewing Korean contemporary art as the “next big market”, or as an extension of the Korean Wave. “I wouldn’t necessarily call it a fixed or clearly defined ‘Korean aesthetic’,” Hwang tells The Art Journal. “What I find interesting is the way Korean artists move between the local and the global.”

MAAT, Focus section, Frieze Seoul 2026. Image: WeCap Studio. Courtesy: Frieze

Many artists working in Korea today, she says, are “very familiar with the international contemporary art scene”. Their work, though, is often rooted in specific experiences of Korean history, society, urban life, technology and everyday culture.

“I think there’s something interesting happening around materials and tradition,” Hwang says. “Some artists are revisiting craft, natural materials, or historical references, but interpreting them in a very contemporary, sometimes quite conceptual way. At the same time, you have artists working with technology, new media and popular culture. In Korea, these elements often come together rather naturally.”

Thaddaeus Ropac, who has had a permanent presence in the city since 2021, thinks the Western art world still underestimates the depth of Seoul’s cultural infrastructure. “Seoul has for a long time had a sophisticated collector base, a diversity of galleries, ambitious institutions and a very active community of artists and independent spaces,” he tells The Art Journal. “You also really see how effectively these different parts of the ecosystem interact with each other.”

“There is also a level of engagement with art and participation in the art scene here that is beyond what we see in the West,” Ropac says. He points to Korea’s long history of contemporary art, including performance art, as well as its established art academies and distinct artistic movements.

That matters because Seoul is still often spoken about as if its art market appeared almost fully formed a few years ago. “There’s a tendency to compare Seoul with Hong Kong, or more broadly with other global art scenes,” Ropac says. “But as well as its own history of artistic movements, it has developed its own collecting culture and a very significant number and wide range of national and private institutions.”

For younger galleries, however, the city can look rather different.

Gagosian, Frieze Seoul 2026. Image: WeCap Studio. Courtesy: Frieze

Christine Lee of Seoul’s relatively young IKLF Gallery, which works with artists including Ireland’s Sinéad Breslin and Korea’s Shumu, says the Korean art world remains concentrated around established networks of institutions, galleries, collectors and artists.

“There’s certainly a lot happening outside of those circles, but it can be difficult for younger galleries and emerging artists to gain visibility, especially internationally, without an existing network behind them,” she tells The Art Journal. “And in a weaker market, this becomes even more challenging.”

Lee does not necessarily see that as a bad thing. “I think this period is also revealing which galleries and artists are genuinely committed to building something for the long term,” she says.

Younger galleries, she adds, are forming closer relationships with artists and building networks outside the established structures. “So perhaps what is still emerging in Korea is not so much a particular Korean aesthetic, but a younger and more independent layer of the art scene, one that is trying to establish its own identity alongside the existing system.”

The buyers have changed as well.

Hoyoung Lee, a Seoul-based collector, says the frenzy of 2022 made people more selective. During the boom, emerging artists could sell almost instantly. Collectors sometimes bought works from PDFs before they had even seen them in person.

“They learned a lesson that even though the artists are hot at one point, when it goes really up, then it could come down really quick and really low,” he tells The Art Journal. “They’re obviously very careful about what art they’re going to collect.”

Lee does not think that caution means international galleries have lost their connection with Seoul. If anything, he thinks they understand it better now. “I think they’re navigating way better than how they used to before,” he says. “Almost every single major gallery has a Korean artist under their programme. They picked them up pretty recently, like, very actively.”