Contemporary Korean art is still very much a product of its past

On the fifth day of the eighth lunar month of AD527, Buddhist monk Ichadon faced the execution he had himself engineered. The man he advised, Beopheung, ruler of Silla, one of the three kingdoms of Korea, had been grappling with a thorny problem: he was determined to make Buddhism the state religion, but his council of nobles opposed him.

Ichadon came up with an extraordinary solution: the king would make the proclamation, then deny all knowledge of it. The monk would then admit to having forged the document and pay for this with his life — but his sacrifice, he believed, would persuade the court to embrace Buddhism.

As the executioner lifted his great sword, Ichadon is reputed to have said: ‘If Buddha is worth believing in, let there be a wonder after my death.’ There was: as his head was severed, the sun vanished, thunder and lightning ripped through the sky, monkeys shrieked and milk, not blood, spurted from Ichadon’s neck. The miracle may be only a legend, but the monk’s martyrdom did persuade the court of the power of Buddhism, sowing the seeds of a cultural blossoming that would last for centuries.

Religion is one of the forces that has historically shaped Korean art, as revealed by a forthcoming exhibition at the British Museum, which traces the past 2,000 years of the country’s history, art and material culture through the 23,000-piece collection bequeathed to the nation in 2021 by the late Samsung chairman Lee Kun-Hee.

Another catalyst, says lead curator Sang-ah Kim, is the relationship with the outside world, particularly China and Japan, and how the country’s skilled craftsmen filtered these influences through the prism of their own creativity. ‘Korea was the second culture in the world after China to master high-fire stoneware,’ Dr Kim explains. ‘They learned how to build a kiln and then how to keep the temperature high, but the stoneware they made was totally different [from China’s].

'In the Three Kingdoms period, they made tall, pedestal-looking burial objects. Why are they tall? Because they are for offering; they also put in lots of figurines, animals — companions for the afterlife.’

The same approach to borrowing and reinterpreting ideas continued during Unified Silla (676–935) — a period in which the kingdom once ruled by Beopheung expanded to control the entire peninsula and its capital, Gyeongju, became so dense with tiled roofs that people could walk down the street in the rain without getting wet — and the subsequent Goryeo era (918–1392), from which the name Korea derives.

Buddhism flourished, not least because Gen Wang Geon, Goryeo’s founder, credited divine assistance for his ascension, and so did religious art. The crown, the court and regional clans all built temples and commissioned paintings, sculptures and, most notably, stoneware. In the 10th century, Korea learned from China how to make celadon pottery. However, Goryeo craftsmen developed their own, distinctive ‘kingfisher’ hue and later adapted inlay techniques to ceramics.

‘On the unfired surface, they carved with sharp tools a decoration, then filled that with white and black slip and fired with glaze. There are lots of designs, such as cranes, clouds or chrysanthemums: they are not painted; they are carved.’

Soon afterwards, in 1011, King Hyeonjong, fleeing an approaching army, vowed to have the entire Buddhist canon carved into wood if his enemy was repelled. They were and the first Tripitaka, a woodblock printed edition of the three-part Buddhist scripture, came into being. This was burnt during the Mongol invasion of 1232 — incidentally, Kublai Khan, the first Mongol emperor of China, would later say that Goryeo, albeit small, had artisans and entertainers that surpassed the Han Chinese — but was then replaced between 1236 and 1251. The 80,000 or so woodblocks of the ‘new’ Tripitaka Koreana are still preserved today at the Haeinsa Temple in Hapcheon.

At about the same time, the country also invented a metal moveable type: ‘The Goryeo dynasty’s printing technology was really advanced, partly because they were Buddhists and in Buddhist countries sutra, the sacred text, is really important, it’s how you promote knowledge,’ explains Dr Kim. ‘They already had really high skills in woodblock printing, then, to make it more efficient, they used metal moveable type.’ It beat Gutenberg’s press by about two centuries and, although most of those early prints are lost, the 1377 Jikji, a collection of excerpts from Buddhist scripture, survives to this day.

Then came the moment that set the country on a new course: the Wihwado Retreat, which Dr Kim likens to the Battle of Hastings. In 1388, general Yi Sŏnggye had been dispatched to invade China’s Liaodong Peninsula. However, at Wihwa Island, he decided to turn back and topple the faltering Goryeo monarchy instead. After a few puppet kings, he himself ascended the throne in 1392 and founded a new dynasty, Joseon, which would remain in power for the next 500 years.

It wasn’t only the rulers that changed. The advent of Joseon ushered in a new religion: neo-Confucianism, a revival of the doctrines of Confucius that had taken root in China under the Song dynasty (960–1279). ‘Their aesthetic was quite different,’ notes Dr Kim. ‘They pursued austerity, simplicity and liked natural things, so they used completely different types of ceramics and painting also assumed a different role.’

Western views of Joseon were long shaped by American writer William Elliot Griffis’s description of it as a ‘hermit kingdom’. Instead, counters Dr Kim, this was a transforming country, at once engaged in cultural exchange and intellectual introspection. After the fall of China’s Ming dynasty in 1644 and the rise to power of the ‘barbarian’ Qing, some Joseon scholars saw Korea as the last bastion of civilisation based on neo-Confucian principles.

In the second half of the 17th century, the country’s social hierarchy also began loosening, with the jungin, the equivalent of the middle class, embracing a culture that was previously the preserve of the elite. Interest in practical studies rose and the economy picked up, with travel becoming increasingly popular. From an artistic perspective, all this opened the door, in the 18th century, for ‘true-view’ landscapes. Artists moved away from idealised Chinese scenery in favour of realistic depictions of Korean surroundings — often underpinned by European notions of perspective.

A pioneer of the genre was Jeong Seon, who in 1751, aged 75, painted Clearing After Rain on Mount Inwang. ‘That’s the mountain in Seoul and that’s where that painter lived for his entire life; so the place was quite familiar to him. It looks very realistic, but at the same time, it’s emotional and very atmospheric.’

Today, video may have replaced true landscapes and celadon vessels, but, says Dr Kim, contemporary Korean art is still very much a product of its past, with which it shares many similarities. ‘Today’s artists are open to new ideas, but they do not just copy or mimic them; they incorporate them into their past and their heritage and create something new.’ This has been spearheaded by luminaries such as Nam June Paik (1932–2006), the first contemporary Korean artist to gain international acclaim, and Kimsooja (b. 1957), who in the past few years has had exhibitions at the Barbican in London and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

That is why, Dr Kim believes, contemporary Korean culture is taking the world by storm: ‘Because in it there is familiarity and unfamiliarity at the same time.’

‘Korea’ is at the British Museum, London, from October 1–January 31, 2027

This feature originally appeared in the September 23, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.