Individual artists worth looking at, and what their record does and does not tell you.
Three numbers from the same four years of Kim Sunwoo's auction record: the record high up 88 percent, the median painting down 26 percent, and a like for like canvas up 34 percent. Only one of them is about price.
Lee Bae's originals rose 89 percent in four years while his editions fell 14 percent. The gap between those two numbers is the most useful thing his record has to teach, and it applies to artists at any price.
A Lee Jinwoo canvas hammered at $97,000 in August 2026 and the rise got reported as 73 percent in three months. Measured by area it was 36 percent, and his entire auction record is twenty lots deep.
One Youngju Joung silkscreen hammered at exactly 2 million won in April 2023, June 2023, July 2023 and December 2025. Over the same stretch her large paintings went from $67,000 to $130,000.
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