Lee Seo-hyun follows in late Lee Kun-hee’s footsteps, named among the world’s 200 top collectors alongside Seok Young-bae and Kim Woong-ki

[Financial News] Lee Seo-hyun, president of Samsung C&T, Amorepacific Chairman Seok Young-bae and Global Sae-A Chairman Kim Woong-ki have been named among the world’s 200 leading art collectors.
On the 6th (local time), U.S. art publication The Art Newspaper selected the three as among the world’s 200 leading art collectors, alongside Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and LVMH Chairman Bernard Arnault.
The Art Newspaper described Lee Seo-hyun as having “followed in the footsteps of the late former Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee, a leading Korean art collector, since his death in 2020.” Most of the approximately 20,000 works of art and antiques he left behind were donated to seven museums and art galleries in Korea.
Lee heads the Samsung Welfare Foundation and serves as Samsung C&T’s president in charge of strategic planning and chair of the Leeum Museum of Art’s operating committee.

Amorepacific, led by Chairman Seok Young-bae, has researched and exhibited Korean art through the Amorepacific Museum of Art, established in 1979. In 2005, it held an exhibition in Japan titled “The Dignity and Beauty of Korean Women.” In 2008, it donated $300,000 to create “Women’s Space” in the Korean galleries at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). It also supported LACMA’s purchases of Korean contemporary art by providing $200,000 annually for five years starting in 2011. In 2022, an Osulloc Tea House opened in Pace Gallery’s space in Seoul’s Hannam-dong neighborhood. Pace Gallery CEO Marc Glimcher told The Art Newspaper that Chairman Seok personally spearheaded the idea.
Global Sae-A Group, led by Chairman Kim Woong-ki, was founded in 1986 and operates in at least 10 countries, primarily across Asia, Central America and the Caribbean. Its businesses span apparel exports, fabric and yarn manufacturing, fashion, construction, food and beverages, and packaging materials, among other areas.
Chairman Kim is known as the buyer who won the bid for Kim Whanki’s blue abstract painting “Universe 5-IV-71 #200” (1971) when the exhibition space S2A opened in Seoul’s Gangnam District in 2022. The space is now Global Sae-A Art Space. The work sold at a 2019 Christie’s Hong Kong auction for $10 million, or about 13.2 billion won at the time, setting a record for the highest auction price for a work by a Korean artist.


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