Differences: Shedding light on other cartographies in Korea
001 A shift away from “Korea=Seoul” to contemplate the South Korean art scene
By Konno Yuki
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Bustling with gallerists, collectors, art professionals, and art aficionados, and with exhibitions and events taking place throughout the city day and night, the event seemed to symbolize Seoul functioning as a gateway to the global art market. (Editor’s note)
The mood in early September: South Korea opens up to the world
Once again this year a Frieze art fair was held in the South Korean capital Seoul. First hosted by Seoul in 2022 to coincide with Kiaf (the Korean International Art Fair), and now on its fourth year, this fair usually bustles with an impressive lineup of international galleries. Although the martial law crisis last year prompted a number of Western exhibitors to withdraw,1 the 2025 iteration of Frieze still managed to attract 120 galleries from 30 countries.2 The alternative events and programs of a decade ago3 have become but a distant memory, with the influence of art fairs now extending deep into the alternative scene and popular culture, in part thanks to the late-night receptions dubbed Euljiro Night, Cheongdam Night, Samcheong Night, and Hannam Night4 held in the district home to Seoul’s alternative spaces and commercial galleries to coincide with Frieze and Kiaf, joined by performance art, artist talks, and DJ parties.5 All these not only create opportunities for those in the art sector to mix and mingle, but artists and collectors too, and can also be seen as an attempt to lower the bar for participation in the art scene.
The Leeum Museum of Art owned by corporate giant Samsung is home to contemporary art from across the globe.6 However what the museum unveiled to coincide with Frieze, was a retrospective of Lee Bul, a leading light of Korea’s own contemporary art scene.7 Having presented a grand exhibition of work by Frenchman Pierre Huyghe in the first half of the year,8 Leeum had thus deliberately chosen a Korean artist to coincide with Frieze and Kiaf. Amid burgeoning visitor numbers at Korean art museums, a commitment to promoting local artists to outside audiences is also becoming evident. This includes ongoing, proactive initiatives to showcase Korean art to the rest of the world like the English-language edition of Monthly Art, titled Boiling Point: Emerging Artists & Spaces in Korea,9 covering independent art spaces. No sooner had the curtain fallen on the Ron Mueck exhibition attracting over 530,000 visitors in the first half of the year,10 than the Korea Art Prize show was also opening earlier than usual at the Seoul branch of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA).11 Al in all, myriad efforts to take Korean art to the world made the capital a hive of activity in early September.
Does Korea=Seoul?
Korean culture, represented most prominently by K-Pop, is now enormously popular and very much “up there” internationally. Many in Japan both feel an easy familiarity with South Korea, as the country’s closest neighbor, and see it as an opportunity to experience some of the finest culture on the globe. The kind of people one spots when flying these days differ markedly even compared to when this author was a student in Korea (from middle school right through to master’s). The trail of those traveling to Korea for work, taking their first overseas trip, or going to visit friends, thanks to the rise of the low-cost carrier, has brought Japan and Korea much closer together. But how much of “Korea” can those traveling there for a short time to check out the art scene actually apprehend? Here I should like to expand the scope of that “how much” and survey the Korean art scene from various angles; because the artists and works assembled at events like Frieze and Kiaf are only ever a select few, and to focus solely on them would be to overlook countless other artistic endeavors. For example, an hour’s travel from Incheon International Airport will take you to Seoul, but there is very little Japanese-language coverage of the Incheon art scene in between. In addition, while places like Busan and Gwangju are known in Japan for their biennials, the psychological distance between Japan and the art scenes in those places, and that of Seoul, is different. Nor is it just this remoteness. These places are obviously different as cities, whether in the particular features of their locality, their population, or the number of universities and people working in art. Relations between institutions and independent operators also vary according to circumstances.
This “Korea=Seoul” model is hard to discard completely when one actually works in the Korean art scene.12 Only Seoul is full of art colleges, and of course the competition is toughest there too. But even for those who have nothing to do with art, there is a deep-rooted tendency to see Seoul as the center of everything that goes hand in hand with the widespread desire to gain work experience or study in the capital. Recent international exhibitions in provincial centers have found opportunities to revisit local history, or the city’s relationship with the surrounding region. But without such opportunities, few will know of these places, or even have any interest in them. With one thing and another, over the last few years I myself have been invited to cover artist residencies and studios in the regions,13 and it has been a painful lesson in the narrowness of my previous outlook. Stepping away from Seoul to other cities to consider the Korean art scene is not a mission exclusively for those in Korea. On the contrary, it is very possible even as an outsider to hop from one place to another and gradually let go of the idea that Korea, equals Seoul.
Patchwork!, Team Hansan, Mockcamp
In saying all this, one does not necessarily have to leave the capital to consider the wider Korean art scene. In the next instalment, I shall attempt to move away from that automatic association of Korea with Seoul while introducing three exhibitions and projects I saw in Seoul during the same period as Frieze and Kiaf. The “Patchwork!” exhibition at The WilloW featured artists from Japan and Korea. Rather than settling on the usual exchange-informed exhibition, these artists were trying to carve out a completely new home in their works through repeated communication and disconnection in the two national languages. Team Hansan recorded the process of a provincial mural project as a work, display, and document, in an interrogation not only of the relationship between Seoul and the provinces, but simultaneously, that of curation and artist. Finally, at Mockcamp, several young practitioners spend seven days producing art in a bootcamp scenario of sorts, and announce the unveiling of the resulting output in guerrilla fashion. For artists, what does it mean to make art together? What is the relationship between exhibiting and production activity? These questions were conceived as opportunities to rethink the “Korea=Seoul” model despite being in Seoul. Next time I shall analyze these three cases as I step away from the notion that South Korea is all about its capital.
1. From the article “Gyeeomlyeong-i bakkun misulsijang ‘kiapeulijeu’ gwanjeonbeob” [How martial law changed the art market: How to view “Kia Freeze,” The Hankyoreh, August 31, 2025 (Korean edition).
2. From the Frieze Seoul website.
3. In the mid-2010s, a string of events were organized mainly by artists and others in the art sector to showcase and distribute works. Examples include Video Relay Tansan (2012–16), Goods (2015), The Scrap (2016–19), PERFORM (2016–19), PACK (2017–23), TasteView (2017–19), Minakutemo Video (2017–19).
4. Each event title composed of a “district name + ‘Night.’”
5. Kiaf SEAOUL：Samcheong Night
6. The Leeum’s Modern & Contemporary Art collection, as shown on their website, includes, among many other big names, works by Gilbert & George, Roni Horn, Murakami Takashi, and Andreas Gursky.
7. “Lee Bul: From 1998 to Now” (September 4, 2025–January 4, 2026).
8. Pierre Huyghe: “Liminal” (February 27–July 6, 2025, Leeum Museum of Art).
9. Special English-language edition, vol. 2, featured Caption Seoul (2023–), CHMBR (2022–), faction (2021), FIM (2024), IAH (2022), sangheeut (2021), SHOWER (2023), and WWNN (2023).
10. Held for 94 days, averaging approximately 5670 visitors per day. According to the July 14, 2025 edition of the Hankook Ilbo, “The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea’s ‘Ron Mueck’ exhibition, which closed on the 13th, attracted 530,000 visitors in 94 days, breaking its previous record.
11. Held concurrently with the Korea Artist Prize 2025 exhibition (August 29, 2025–February 1, 2026) is a solo show of works by Kim Tschang-Yeul, best known for his photo-realistic paintings for water drops.
12. The author first began to reconsider the “Korea=Seoul” model at a round-table discussion in AVP Quarterly No.6. Being invited to take part as one of four on the panel not based in Seoul enabled him to take a fresh, more objective look at the capital.
13. Most artist residencies in South Korea have a program that involves matching the artist with a critic. The artist taking up the residency and the critic talk, and ultimately the critic writes and submits an essay on the artist.
(All websites cited above last accessed December 1, 2025)
About the series
“Differences: Shedding light on other cartographies in Korea” is a series by Japan- and Korea-based art critic Konno Yuki. By deliberately shifting perspective from Seoul as center of Korean arts and culture, to take a fresh look at other parts of the country, the series aims to draw a line between alternative activities and art discussed in local contexts, in an attempt to redraw the contours of the Korean art scene.
Konno Yuki
Art critic active mainly in South Korea. Planner of “After 10.12” (Audio Visual Pavilion, 2018), “Kankokuga to Toyoga to” (gallery TOWED, FINCH ARTS, Jungganjijeom II, 2022) and other exhibitions. South Korean correspondent for the Padograph portal (https://padograph.com/ja）showcasing art exhibitions and event information from Japan and South Korea. Runner-up in the Gravity Effect 2019 art criticism competition.