History of Korean Art Timeline

Historical records and Korean books were circulated as early as the seventh century during the Three Kingdoms era through printing from woodblocks.

Image source: Woodblock printing in Korea

Notable historical records were well documented from early times, forming an important written component of Korea’s cultural and artistic history.

Popular musical dance-dramas known as gamuguk had precedents during Goryeo times, linking music, movement, drama, and spectacle.

In the Goryeo era, the world’s first metal type was produced, and books printed with metal type became an important achievement in Korean publishing history.

Image source: Jikji

With the rise of Joseon nationalism, Korean poetry developed increasingly and reached its apex in the late eighteenth century.

Korean poetry reached a high point in the late eighteenth century, within the broader development of literature associated with Joseon nationalism.

There were attempts to introduce imagist and modern poetic methods in Korea during the early twentieth century.

During the early republic period, patriotic poetic works were particularly successful and became an important part of modern Korean literary culture.

The Goryeo dynasty lasted from 918 to 1392. Its court, religious institutions, and workshops supported major developments in ceramics, sculpture, literature, and performance.

Image source: Goryeo

The Goryeo dynasty was one of the most prolific periods for a wide range of artistic disciplines, especially pottery.

The most famous art produced by Goryeo artisans was Korean celadon pottery, made approximately from 1050 to 1250 CE.

During the twelfth century, Korean potters developed jinsa, or underglaze red, using copper oxide pigment to create copper-red designs.

Korea’s jinsa underglaze-red technique later inspired underglaze-red ceramics produced during China’s Yuan dynasty.

After the fall of the Goryeo kingdom in 1392, Goryeo potters made ceramic pieces that continued and transformed the dynasty’s pottery traditions.

Image source: Korean pottery and porcelain

For much of the twentieth century, painting commanded precedence over other artistic media in Korea.

Image source: Korean art

After 1945, Korean masks increasingly became tourist artifacts and were reproduced in large numbers as souvenirs.

Patriotic films dominated North Korean culture from 1949 to 1994 and represented an important arena in which socialist-realist art was expressed.

In the 1970s and 1980s, challenges within Korean painting eventually became the foundation of Dansaekhwa, or Korean monochrome painting.

Dansaekhwa became one of the most successful and controversial artistic movements in twentieth-century Korea, emphasizing monochrome surfaces and material process.

After Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994, directives governing painting in North Korea were relaxed and were sometimes completely abolished under Kim Jong Il.

From 1994 onward, art forms other than socialist realism became particularly visible in North Korea, including reawakened architecture, calligraphy, fabric work, and neo-traditional painting.

The contemporary artist Suh Yongsun, known for heavy brushstrokes and subjects including Korean history and urban scenes in cities such as New York and Berlin, was elected Korea’s artist of the year in 2009.