Korean art can be found far beyond Korea. Museums in New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, and many other cities hold Goryeo Buddhist paintings, Joseon white porcelain, ceramics, sculpture, textiles, archaeological objects, and everyday items from different periods of Korean history.
Some of these objects left Korea more than a century ago, while others entered foreign museum collections much more recently through purchases, donations, bequests, or exchanges. That raises a question that interests me more than simply making a list of beautiful Korean treasures overseas: how did these objects get there?
The answer is not the same for every object. Some Korean cultural heritage was stolen or removed during war, foreign intervention, and Japanese colonial rule, while other pieces were legally purchased, presented as gifts, collected with official cooperation, or passed from one private owner to another before eventually entering a museum.
This is where provenance becomes important. In museum terminology, provenance means the history of an object’s ownership and movement. When looking at Korean artifacts abroad, I think that history can sometimes tell us as much as the object itself.
More Than 250,000 Korean Cultural Heritage Objects Are Overseas
As of January 2026, the Korea Heritage Service and the Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation had identified 256,190 Korean cultural heritage objects in 801 institutions across 29 countries. Japan holds the largest share, with 110,611 objects, or 43.2 percent of the total, while the United States holds roughly 68,000, followed by Germany with more than 16,000 and the United Kingdom with about 15,000.
Those figures do not mean that more than 250,000 Korean objects were all looted from Korea. The official tally includes cultural heritage that left through many different routes, including theft and looting but also purchase, donation, collecting, diplomatic exchange, and other forms of transfer.
The total can also rise when researchers identify previously undocumented Korean objects in overseas collections, not only when something newly leaves Korea. In other words, the phrase “Korean cultural heritage overseas” describes where an object is today; it does not, by itself, tell us whether that object left Korea legally or illegally.
If you want to compare these overseas collections with what can be seen in Korea itself, I have a separate guide to the National Museum of Korea, where many of Korea’s major archaeological, Buddhist, ceramic, and historical collections are displayed.
Not Every Korean Artifact Abroad Was Looted
Museum collection pages often contain words such as Gift, Purchase, or Bequest. These terms tell us how the museum itself acquired an object, but they do not always tell us the entire story of how that object first left Korea.
Suppose a museum record says that an object was donated in 1981. That explains how the museum obtained it in 1981, but it does not necessarily explain how the donor originally acquired the object decades earlier. The reverse assumption is also a problem: an old Korean object in a European museum is not automatically evidence of looting simply because it is outside Korea.
The Musée Guimet in Paris provides an interesting example. Its Korean collection now contains more than 1,500 objects, including paintings, ceramics, sculpture, and textiles, and part of its early collection is connected with French diplomat Victor Collin de Plancy and explorer Charles Varat, who gathered material related to Korean culture in the late nineteenth century.
The museum’s own history states that Collin de Plancy and Varat sent Korean cultural material to France with the support of Korean authorities. That history is quite different from the removal of archaeological material under Japanese colonial rule several decades later.
Even within a single museum, however, thousands of objects may have completely different histories. A museum name alone cannot tell us the provenance of everything inside it, which is why I think the more useful question is not simply, “Why is this Korean object in France, Britain, or America?” but rather, “What do we actually know about the route this particular object took?”
Four Western Museums With Important Korean Collections
The Newark Museum of Art: A Korean Collection Outside the Usual Tourist Route
The Newark Museum of Art in New Jersey is far less famous internationally than the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but it has been collecting Asian art since the early years of the institution. The museum currently describes its Korean collection as numbering in the 400s, including ceramics, clothing, and textiles.
It is a useful reminder that Korean artifacts abroad are not concentrated only in a handful of famous national museums. They are also held in regional museums, university collections, libraries, and smaller institutions, which makes researching Korean heritage overseas more complicated than checking only the largest museums.
A major royal painting in London may be easy to identify, while another object can remain relatively unknown in a regional collection for decades until researchers catalogue or publish it. This is also one reason the number of identified Korean cultural objects abroad can continue to increase.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Owning an Object Does Not Mean It Is Always on Display
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds important Korean works, including Goryeo Buddhist paintings. One example is a Water-Moon Avalokiteshvara from the first half of the fourteenth century, showing the elaborately dressed bodhisattva seated above the water with the young pilgrim Sudhana appearing below.
The delicate veil, textile patterns, and fine painting are characteristic of the extraordinary detail associated with Goryeo Buddhist art. But there is a practical detail travelers should know: a museum may own an important work without displaying it permanently.
As of 2026, The Met’s official page for this Water-Moon Avalokiteshvara lists the painting as Not on view. The museum record says it entered The Met in 1914 as a gift from members of the Charles Stewart Smith family in memory of Charles Stewart Smith.
That gives us a clear museum acquisition date, although it does not necessarily explain every stage of the painting’s journey from Korea to the Smith collection. It is also a reminder that travelers interested in one particular artifact should check the museum’s current collection page before visiting.
Goryeo paintings like this are easier to understand when placed within the longer history of Korean Buddhism. I discuss that background separately in my article on the history of Korean temples and Buddhist culture.
The British Museum: Following the Owners of a Joseon Moon Jar
The British Museum’s Korea Foundation Gallery, Room 67, contains Korean objects from different historical periods. One of its best-known pieces is a large eighteenth-century Joseon white porcelain moon jar.
Unlike many objects whose early ownership is difficult to trace, this jar has a relatively detailed modern provenance. British potter Bernard Leach acquired it in Korea in 1935, and it later passed to potter Lucie Rie and then to Janet Leach before appearing at auction.
The British Museum purchased it in 1999 and currently lists the Joseon moon jar in Room 67 as being on display. This does not necessarily answer every possible question about its original sale in Korea in 1935, but the later stages of its ownership can be followed much more clearly than those of many objects that moved overseas during the same era.
Instead of simply saying, “This Korean jar is in Britain,” we can therefore begin to reconstruct the people through whose hands it passed and when the museum entered the story. That difference is exactly what provenance research allows us to see.
This walkthrough provides a useful sense of how Korean objects are displayed together in the British Museum’s Korea Foundation Gallery. Since gallery displays can change, the museum’s official collection page is still the best place to check whether a particular object is currently on view.
Musée Guimet: An Early French Collection of Korean Art
The Musée Guimet in Paris holds more than 1,500 Korean objects and describes its Korean collection as one of the most significant outside Korea. Its history is particularly interesting because some of the collection grew out of early Korea-France cultural contact in the late nineteenth century.
Victor Collin de Plancy, France’s first diplomatic representative in Korea, became closely associated with the collecting and introduction of Korean art in France. Charles Varat also traveled through Korea in 1888–1889, collecting objects related to Korean daily life, religion, clothing, and material culture.
The Guimet’s official account says Korean authorities supported these collecting missions. This does not mean that every Korean object now at the Guimet entered the collection through the same process, since museum collections develop over generations through purchases, donations, transfers, and later acquisitions.
Still, the Guimet example demonstrates why the word “looted” cannot automatically be applied to every Korean object in a Western museum. The history of each object needs to be examined on its own evidence.
In 2026, the museum also presented Silla: Gold and the Sacred, an exhibition created around the art and religious culture of the Silla kingdom. Even after the temporary exhibition ends, the museum’s official video remains a useful example of how Korean cultural heritage is interpreted and presented in a major European museum.
Tokyo National Museum and the Ogura Collection: A Different Kind of History
Japan requires a separate discussion because the historical relationship is different. I have personally visited the Tokyo National Museum and seen Korean artifacts there, so unlike New York, London, or Paris, this is a museum where I can connect the collection with an actual visit rather than only with research.
The Tokyo National Museum holds Korean artifacts ranging from prehistoric archaeology to Buddhist art, ceramics, paintings, and objects from the Joseon period. Not all of them arrived in Japan during colonial rule, because Korea and Japan exchanged religion, technology, art, people, and objects for many centuries before 1910.
The Ogura Collection, however, raises a different set of questions. Ogura Takenosuke was a Japanese businessman who built a large collection of Korean antiquities while living and doing business in colonial Korea, including archaeological objects, ceramics, paintings, metalwork, books, clothing, and other material.
In 1981, approximately 1,030 Korean objects from the collection were donated to the Tokyo National Museum by Ogura’s family and the organization that managed the collection. That museum donation is clear, but the more difficult question is how Ogura acquired the individual objects in Korea before they reached the museum.
Some were purchased through the art and antiquities market, while investigations of the collection have also raised questions about archaeological material, objects with unclear excavation histories, and artifacts that may have circulated through illicit markets during the colonial period. South Korea had already requested the return of the Ogura Collection during Korea-Japan negotiations in the late 1950s, but Japan treated it as privately owned property and it was not included among the objects eventually transferred to Korea.
It would still be too broad to state that all 1,030 objects were individually proven to have been illegally looted. The evidence and acquisition history differ from object to object.
At the same time, simply reading “Gift of the Ogura Foundation” on a modern museum label does not settle the historical question. It tells us how the Tokyo National Museum received the object, not necessarily how Ogura originally obtained it in colonial Korea.
The issue is not merely historical. The Tokyo National Museum’s current Korean Peninsula galleries still list several archaeological and Buddhist objects as gifts of the Ogura Foundation.
For a wider explanation of why questions from the colonial period still affect relations between the two countries, see my article on Korea-Japan relations and historical memory.
How Did These Objects Actually Get There?
Looking across these museums, it becomes clear that there was no single route by which Korean cultural heritage left Korea. Some objects were purchased by foreigners living or traveling in Korea, while others entered private collections and were eventually donated or sold to museums.
Some were collected by diplomats or researchers, sometimes with the cooperation of Korean authorities. War and colonial rule, however, created far more difficult situations in which legal trade, archaeological excavation, private collecting, grave robbery, illicit dealing, and unequal political power could exist at the same time.
An object that later appears in a museum catalogue as a perfectly legal “purchase” may have passed through several owners before that transaction. This is why provenance research often has to move backward from the museum: who sold the object to the museum, who owned it before that, where that person obtained it, and whether its original archaeological context was recorded.
Other questions can be even harder to answer. Was the object legally exportable at the time, and if the transaction took place under colonial rule, did the imbalance of power affect the way it could be acquired?
The answer may be obvious for one artifact and almost impossible to establish for another. I think acknowledging that uncertainty is more useful than forcing every Korean object abroad into one simple story.
Should Every Korean Artifact Overseas Be Returned?
As a Korean, I understand the instinctive reaction of seeing an important Korean artifact overseas and thinking, “Why is that there instead of here?” When an object can be shown to have been stolen, illegally excavated, looted during war, or unlawfully exported, there is a strong case for restitution.
But that does not mean every Korean artifact outside Korea belongs in the same category. Objects legally purchased from legitimate owners, diplomatic gifts, and cultural objects that moved through documented exchange cannot automatically be treated like stolen archaeological material.
At the same time, the opposite argument is also too simple. Saying that Korean artifacts should remain abroad because they “promote Korea to the world” does not erase questions about how particular collections were formed, and a transaction being legal under the rules of a colonial period does not necessarily answer every ethical question about power, excavation, or ownership.
Return is also not the only form of cooperation. Museums and Korean heritage institutions can jointly research provenance, conserve objects, organize long-term loans, digitize collections, and create exhibitions that make acquisition histories more transparent.
The more useful starting point is not choosing between “bring everything back” and “leave everything where it is,” but establishing what actually happened to each object.
Where was the object originally, who acquired it, and how did it leave Korea? Who owned it afterward, did war or colonial rule affect that process, and how honestly does the museum explain that history today?
Only after those questions are investigated can we have a meaningful discussion about restitution, ownership, preservation, and access. The next time I see a Korean artifact in a museum overseas, I want to look beyond its dynasty, material, and artistic style and also read the smaller words on the label: Provenance. Acquisition. Gift. Purchase.
Sometimes those few lines contain another history — the story of how a Korean object traveled across borders and eventually ended up behind that particular museum glass.
About the Author 🇰🇷
I live in South Korea and write about the small details of Korean life and culture that I experience and observe firsthand.
English is my second language, so I sometimes use tools such as Gemini and Google Translate to help with translation and editing. The experiences, observations, opinions, and cultural perspectives in my articles are my own, and I personally review and edit every article before publishing it.
My goal with Korea Core Info is simple: to share everyday Korea from a local perspective and help international readers discover things they might not always find in a typical travel guide.
I hope my stories and guides help you understand Korea a little better — not just as a place to visit, but as a place where people live their everyday lives.