Introduction to 'Korea'
Uncover over two thousand years of creativity in the special exhibition Korea (1 October 2026 – 31 January 2027).
K-pop and Korean TV dramas have taken the world by storm – but they're just the latest expression of over 2,000 years of Korean creativity. Ahead of our new exhibition, Lead Curator Sang-ah Kim looks at the cultural history of the peninsula, and examines some of its most remarkable works of art.
Nearly every work in the exhibition – apart from a few pieces from the British Museum – come from a single source: the collection of Lee Kun-Hee (1942–2020), former Chairman of Samsung, and his family. Over decades, Lee built one of the most important collections of Korean art in the world. After his passing in 2020, his family donated more than 23,000 objects from his collection to Korea's national museums, transforming public access to Korean cultural heritage. Now, in partnership with the National Museum of Korea and Korea's National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, these works will travel to the UK for the first time.
Korea is a peninsula modest in size, slightly smaller than the UK, located at the north-eastern edge of Asia between China and Japan. For centuries, it served as both a destination and a bridge for the people, technologies and ideas moving eastward across the Eurasian continent. Korea's remarkable dynastic stability provides the chronological framework for this exhibition. From the ancient kingdoms through the modern era, each period had distinct social structures, government, forms of religion, and art, all of which contributed to a lasting cultural legacy.
Wealth and power: Korea's early Iron Age to Unified Silla (around 400 BC—AD 935)
Who would have worn these shoes? Probably no one – at least, not in life. These dazzling gilt-bronze shoes were made as burial furnishings for a member of royalty from the ancient kingdom of Silla. Golden shoes were not unique to Silla – a pair of gold sandals was among the treasures found in Tutankhamun's tomb – and like ancient Egypt, Silla invested costly materials and superb artistry into objects destined never to be seen. Gold has always been the language of eternity; here it also speaks to the extraordinary wealth and sophistication of Silla's ancient rulers.
Though made of humble clay, this horn-shaped cup resting on the back of a horse was also made as a burial object. The horn cup connects ancient Korea to the vast Eurasian Steppe, where drinking vessels shaped like animal horns were commonly used by nomadic peoples. The horse carries that connection quite literally on its back.
Buddhism likewise came to Korea from the continent, originating in India and passing through Central Asia and China, in one of the greatest cultural transmissions in history. Once it took root, it became the dominant force in Korean spiritual and artistic life for centuries. Small gilt-bronze figures such as this one were made for private devotion, placed on a personal altar and contemplated in quiet moments. The luminous gilding embodied divine radiance, making the sacred visible and tangible. This sculpture, designated a National Treasure of Korea, is among the earliest surviving works of Korean Buddhist sculpture.
Wisdom and beauty: the Goryeo dynasty (AD 918–1392)
Under state patronage during the Goryeo dynasty, Buddhism nurtured an extraordinary flowering of art and culture. Among the finest expressions of this culture are the hand-copied sutras. Copying sacred Buddhist texts by hand was itself an act of devotion; every brushstroke carried spiritual meaning. This opening section of the Flower Garland Sutra, painted in gold and silver on indigo-dyed paper, was commissioned as a prayer for the patron's good health and longevity and the wellbeing of his family. The result is a dazzling masterpiece.
This lacquer box was made to hold sacred Buddhist texts. Its surface is alive with delicate inlaid mother-of-pearl decoration, a technique Goryeo artisans elevated to a level of extraordinary refinement. Fewer than 10 such sutra boxes are known to survive today. A wife of the Mongol Kublai Khan – founder of the Yuan dynasty in China – specifically requested boxes like this one to to house her copies of sutras. In response, in 1272, the Goryeo government established a workshop expressly for lacquerware sutra boxes.
Inlay, or sanggam, was a hallmark of Goryeo ceramics. Adapting kiln technology from China, Goryeo potters developed celadon: high-fired stoneware with a greenish or bluish glaze that, at its finest, was likened to kingfisher feathers or jade. Inlay, already perfected in metalwork and lacquerware of the period, became a favoured technique for Goryeo celadon. Designs were incised into unfired clay, filled with white or black slip, and then sealed beneath a coat of glaze before firing. This painstaking process yielded vivid motifs that seem to float within the reflective surface, as if emerging from within the ceramic itself.
Learning and pleasure: the Joseon dynasty (1392–1897)
The invention of Hangeul – an alphabet designed to record the sounds of Korean speech – was a milestone in Korean history. Sponsored by King Sejong, the new writing system, brilliant in its simplicity, opened literacy to all. Among the most significant works to be published in Hangeul was Episodes from the Life of Shakyamuni Buddha as Reflections of the Moon (Worin seokbo), which brought together two earlier texts: Episodes from the Life of Shakyamuni Buddha (Seokbo sangjeol), compiled by Sejong's son Prince Suyang, and Songs of the Moon's Reflection on a Thousand Rivers (Worin cheongang jigok), a collection of Buddhist hymns composed by Sejong for each of the verses. After Prince Suyang ascended to the throne as King Sejo, the two works were collated and published as Worin seokbo. Where Buddhist scriptures had previously been written in Sanskrit or Classical Chinese – and were therefore beyond the reach of most readers – their translation into Hangeul allowed complex religious doctrines to reach a far broader audience, spreading both the Buddhist faith and a wider culture of learning throughout Joseon society.
In the Joseon period, painting took on a new role as an expression of royal authority. This folding screen, depicting the sun, moon and five peaks, symbolises a cosmos in perfect harmony. Such screens were reserved exclusively for Joseon kings and placed behind the king, whether seated on his throne or presiding over outdoor ceremonies. The sun, moon and five peaks are today one of the most recognised symbols of Korean culture, appearing on the 10,000 Korean won banknote behind King Sejong the Great, and most recently as a backdrop for a performance by the girlband protagonists Huntrix in the 2025 Netflix film K-Pop Demon Hunters.
For centuries, Korean painters looked to the Chinese tradition of idealised, imaginary landscapes for inspiration. But in the 18th century, around the middle of the Joseon period, painters turned their gaze to Korea's own rivers and rocky peaks. The pioneer of this new genre, known as 'true-view' landscape painting, was Jeong Seon (1676–1759). In 1751, at the age of 75, he captured this image of a mountain in Seoul after rain – with its moisture-laden rocks, mist-shrouded valleys and a few rooftops just visible through the trees. Jeong Seon rendered not just the mountain's form but its atmosphere, its mood and perhaps his own feeling for a place he had known all his life. This painting is a landmark in Korean art history, as acknowledged by its National Treasure designation. It was also especially prized by Lee Kun-Hee, as the first joint acquisition he made with his wife.
In Joseon, where the moral integrity and self-restraint of Neo-Confucianism was the official state ideology, scholarship was placed at the heart of civilised life. But with increasing prosperity in the 18th and 19th centuries, a new element came to the fore: an unapologetic pleasure in ownership of objects that were beautiful, exotic and rare. Chaekgado – paintings of scholars' accoutrements arrayed on bookshelves – first appeared in the 18th century under royal patronage as a genre celebrating knowledge. In time, the shelves in these paintings began to fill with more than books: costly ceramics, antiques, items with auspicious meanings and imported curiosities from across Asia and beyond. These paintings celebrated learning, and they also revealed a growing fascination with luxury, collecting and display. For those who owned such collections, these paintings documented their wealth and taste. For those who didn't, these hyper-realistic paintings served as an affordable substitute.
Individuality and community: the 20th century to the present
No period in Korean history has been more turbulent than the 20th century. Colonisation by Japan (1910–45), the Korean War (1950–53), ending in the division of the peninsula into two states, North and South, and decades of oppressive government up to the 1980s reshaped every aspect of society, including art. Artists navigated the tensions between tradition and modernity, the local and the global, to produce work that was neither entirely Western nor traditionally Korean, but something altogether new.
One of the first Korean women to study art in both Japan and Europe, Paik Namsoon was among the boldest artists of the colonial era. Paradise, her only surviving pre-liberation work, brings together nude figures inspired by French Fauvism and the soaring peaks and waterfalls from East Asian utopian imagery, fusing East and West into her own vision.
Lee Jungseop's life and works encapsulate the tumult of the mid-20th century. Born into wealth in what is now North Korea, he studied art in Japan, fell in love, and built a life – before war and ideology took it apart. The communist regime condemned his work as decadent, and the Korean War separated him from his wife and sons and drove him into desperate poverty. Unable to afford paint or canvas, he scratched images into the foil lining of cigarette packs using nails and awls. Within these tiny surfaces, his lines burn with urgency: here, bound figures are etched with a sharpness that allowed no hesitation; desperation became defiance.
Suh Do Ho has built a career that spans continents, yet he never quite left Korea behind. Now living in London, Suh returns again and again in his work to the idea of home: what it means to carry it with you, and what it costs to leave it. In this thread drawing, a traditional Korean house, outlined in shimmering threads of brilliant colours, hovers in the air above a solitary figure. It is a home carried across borders; burden and shelter, entrapment and protection. Recently acquired by the British Museum, Suh's Self Portrait feels like a fitting place to end: a Korean artist, living abroad, threading his heritage into something new. Not a closed chapter, but a conversation unfolding.
As these objects so eloquently testify, Korean art has flourished through its own creative and technical innovation as well as the absorption and transformation of ideas from beyond the peninsula. Deeply rooted yet endlessly inventive, this spirit runs throughout the exhibition and reveals how the past serves as a wellspring for Korea's ongoing artistic vitality, where past and present remain in dialogue, both within Korean culture and on the global stage.
Catch these extraordinary works of art among many more in the major exhibition Korea running from 1 October 2026 to 31 January 2027.
Supported by
National Museum of Korea
Corporate partner
Samsung
