23. Has Korea Survived the Hype? Frieze Seoul, Gwangju Biennale (with Vivienne Chow)

I had a look at the UBS report from this year, 2026, and actually the Korean art market is only apparently 1% according to their data, but it has grown recently by 6%.

Could you tell us a little bit about why did they choose Korea and not they could

have chosen somewhere else? I think officially Freeside also is an important cultural destination and it makes sense to set up there.

But my take or what I witnessed at the time was I think there were a lot of anxieties around Hong Kong.

Right.

Especially after the 2019 protests and then the COVID hard lockdown.

So I think for any business, any kind of business, any kind of industry, they would want to find somewhere.

But, you know, the money has to go somewhere and they need to make business.

So if I can't go to Hong Kong, where else can I go in Asia? And a few places emerged.

Singapore, Taipei, Seoul.

But Taipei didn't really work because it also fell into a hard lockdown situation.

And it's also a very distinctive market.

So it's another conversation.

But then I freezed next to Seoul.

And it was a logical choice in a sense that because I think the difference between...

I've been thinking about the different trajectories of hong kong and seoul two major art cities in asia and i talked about that briefly recently in the new york times that it seemed to be quite similar because the two places they both have an international i.e western fair a major big name landed on these two cities but then how it's developed and how it is structured around this local cultural ecosystem they are very

very different

And I think the great thing about Seoul and wider Korea is that because it's a whole country and so in terms of population and also the size and the cultural offering.

So the ecosystem is already there.

So when you have an international, a big name international fair launching in an already quite established city, it kind of brings everything together.

It brings like new energy and it kind of ignites a new sort of excitement.

And of course, at the time, there was also a lot of speculation activities going on.

So the market kind of skyrocketed.

But now, okay, five years on, the initial hype, and of course, I think that hype was also contributed by the K-culture, K-pop, K-drama.

I think it all fuses together.