Why Seoul’s Young Galleries Are Looking Abroad

It wasn’t too long ago you could fly from London to Basel for the price of the bratwurst, crusty bread roll and lager you would order once you got there. Whether Basel has become more expensive or the airlines more greedy is a discussion for another day in another, less riveting, publication. Yet every June the artworld continues to make the journey to the small Swiss city that gave birth to Art Basel all those years ago (56 to be precise) and, in doing so, cemented its reputation as the centre of that world. Around the fair has grown an ecosystem of exhibitions, events and satellite fairs, including Liste, for new and emerging galleries and artists, now in its 31st edition. 

By now, we’ve read enough articles about the rising costs of art fairs. According to the latest UBS and Art Basel Art Market Report, fairs were galleries’ third-largest expense category, after payroll and rent, accounting for 15 percent of total spend. And that’s before you’ve shipped your artworks, shipped yourself, and booked that hotel that you’ve been told everyone who’s anyone is staying at. For those whose flight requires a film and an inflight meal rather than a quick hop across the channel, the sums become harder to justify. And yet the number of South Korean galleries exhibiting at Liste continues to grow. 

Until 2024, no Korean gallery had ever exhibited at Liste. This year, there are seven. When the fair opens next week, Seoul will be more strongly represented than New York. Nikola Dietrich, who became director of Liste last year, says the shift has also been visible in the fair's application pool, with Korean galleries applying in far greater numbers than they were just a few years ago. The trend becomes harder to explain when you read that galleries turning over less than $250,000 a year (the category into which many Liste participants fall) generated just 27% of their sales through fairs last year, the lowest share of any dealer segment. Why, then, are Seoul’s young gallerists so determined to make the journey?

Liste Art Fair Basel, 2025. Photo: Silke Briel. Courtesy Liste Art Fair Basel

“Everyone wasn’t Korean, and that was important,” says Dooyong Ro, founder of Cylinder, recalling the gallery’s debut at Liste in 2024. “I met international collectors and curators I would have never met in Seoul.” Despite selling out his booth, Ro spent far more time in our conversation discussing the people he met than the works he sold. One encounter led to a conversation with a prominent New York dealer who has since become an important source of advice. Part of Liste’s appeal lies in the reputation it has built over three decades in a city which is seen by many as the centre of the artworld. 

For Hyejin Jee of sangheeut, which will make its European debut there this year, the opportunity lies in meeting fellow exhibitors. Among this year’s galleries are Addis Fine Art from Addis Ababa, Bel Ami from Los Angeles, Gratin from New York, Gathering from London and Vin Vin from Vienna. “I need to build relationships with other international galleries,” she says. “So we can work together in the future as it’s a cheaper way of getting your artists out there.” 

In 2024, sanghueet launched Alter Being, a collaborative programme with Tokyo’s CALM & PUNK Gallery, introducing artists from Korea and Japan to each other’s audiences through an exchange of exhibitions. The experience convinced Jee of the value in building relationships with galleries abroad, particularly as collaborations and exchange programmes offer a more affordable route to visibility than another fair booth. We’ve seen this model work with Condo in London. Kyungmin Lee of Whistle agrees. The gallery is currently participating in a collaborative exhibition at Romance in Pittsburgh, alongside ROH from Jakarta and Misako & Rosen from Toshima, to coincide with the 59th Carnegie International. 

Now it must be said: part of the explanation for Korea’s growing presence at international art fairs lies in sustained government investment in the country’s cultural sector. The late 2010s saw a boom in millennial and Gen-Z galleries, many of which benefited from support provided by the Korean Arts Management Service (KAMS). Through initiatives such as PIAF (Fund for Participation in International Art Fairs), KAMS has helped younger galleries expand their international reach by subsidising booth and shipping costs, contributing to the growing visibility of Korean galleries on the global art fair circuit. 

“I remember showing at Liste for the first time as a young gallery and the sheer effort and luck required to make it happen,” says Freddie Powell, founder of London’s Ginny on Frederick, who exhibited at Liste in 2023 and 2024 before graduating to Art Basel last year. “International fairs can be transformative for artists and galleries, but they often come with significant financial risk.” He points to KAMS and the Dutch Mondriaan Fund as examples of the value of investing in emerging galleries at a crucial stage of development. Comparable support remains difficult to access in the US and UK, where younger galleries are often left to shoulder much of the risk themselves. Had similar funding been available stateside, a few more New York galleries might have made the trip to Basel, particularly at a time when the strength of the Swiss franc against the dollar has made participation increasingly expensive for American dealers. 

However, funding alone does not tell the whole story. Of this year’s seven Korean galleries, fewer than half are receiving KAMS support, either because they are not exhibiting Korean artists (a prerequisite for funding) or because they were accepted by Liste after the KAMS application deadline. The willingness of so many young galleries to make the journey regardless suggests that the potential rewards of Basel are still considered worth the considerable costs. 

“The majority of people walking around Frieze Seoul are Asian or Korean,” one gallerist told me. “It's really hard to meet collectors and curators from abroad.” Another, showing in Frieze Seoul’s Focus section for the first time, said they were surprised by how few international curators and collectors they encountered walking the halls. 

Since launching in 2022, Frieze Seoul has continued to grow, attracting 120 exhibitors and around 70,000 visitors last year (well above the 20,000 who attended Frieze New York and not far behind the 90,000 visitors drawn by Frieze London and Frieze Masters). However, the balance of exhibitors has shifted. More than 50 exhibitors from the inaugural fair did not return in 2025, among them prominent international names such as Karma, Matthew Marks, Luhring Augustine and Sadie Coles HQ. In their place has come a much stronger contingent of galleries from East and Southeast Asia. The shift has prompted questions about whether Frieze Seoul is becoming increasingly regional in character. 

G Gallery, Liste Art Fair Basel, 2025 (installation view). Courtesy G Gallery, Seoul

Seung Jin Chung, owner and director of G Gallery, established in 2013 and exhibiting at Liste for the second time, offered a more diplomatic assessment. Optimistic that the Korean art scene is becoming “more internationally connected while also developing a stronger sense of its own identity,” he framed the recent slowdown as “a period of greater maturity and stabilisation,” allowing galleries to place “greater emphasis on building sustainable artist careers and developing long-term relationships with collectors and institutions.” And, of course, there is truth in that. The speculative frenzy that characterised parts of the market in 2021 and 2022 was never likely to last indefinitely. But galleries have bills to pay, and visibility remains a prerequisite for opportunity. International collectors, curators and institutions are far more likely to engage with artists whose work they have encountered firsthand.

Geography will always present a challenge. Seoul is more than 11,000 kilometres from New York and a 12-hour flight from London. But if distance cannot be changed, the value of the journey can. One curator told me that the overlap of this fall’s Frieze Seoul with both the Busan and Gwangju Biennale in the south of the country will convince a number of their international colleagues to make the trip. 

One possibility is to think regionally rather than nationally, they suggest. One of the draws of Frieze London for visitors arriving from Asia is that Art Basel Paris follows just a week later; a short Eurostar for considerably better food and marginally better weather. Push Taipei Art Week and Tokyo Art Week forward by a few weeks and East Asia could have its own equivalent. Collectors and curators could do a fortnight of research, PRs would have an easier time justifying the cost of flying journalists out to cover it, and our younger galleries would stand a far greater chance of reaching the international audiences that they are currently bankrupting themselves to find. 

Until then, galleries will continue to make the journey to Liste. “It’s confusing thinking about the whole thing,” one gallerist confessed. “You’ve just got to do it if you want to make a sale. You’ve just got to fly.”