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Korea’s art market grows, but working conditions for entry-level workers do not

Published: 27 Apr. 2026, 08:00

LIM JEONG-WON
[email protected]

Visitors are seen at the Galleries Art Fair held at Coex in Gangnam District, southern Seoul on April 8. [YONHAP]

When a 20-something intern at a small gallery on the outskirts of Seoul first got the job, she was elated. Park (alias), who had not studied the fine arts in university but loved art, was ready to throw herself into work on her first day. Then she was handed the contract.

Thrust in Park’s face on the first day of work, the contract detailed a wage that was lower than what a part-time job at a convenience store would offer — a meager 1.35 million won ($910) after taxes, far below the minimum wage of 10,320 won an hour set by law in Korea.

Park hesitated. For a moment, she considered walking away.

But leaving was not a simple choice.

In the art world, early experience is often treated as a prerequisite for entry into better-known galleries or institutions. Without that first line on a resume, no matter how poorly paid, moving forward can be difficult. For many entering the field, such conditions are widely understood as an informal rite of passage — a stage that must be endured before access to more stable positions becomes possible.

“I knew the pay was too low, but I had already heard that this kind of thing happens in this field,” Park said in an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily. “If I did not take it, someone else would have, and I needed somewhere to start. So in that moment, it didn’t feel like something I could just refuse.”

This issue is not new, but as Korea’s art market has grown in scale and visibility in recent years — hosting global events such as Frieze Seoul — the disconnect has become harder to ignore. While the industry gains international recognition, the conditions facing entry-level workers have remained largely unchanged.

Visitors line up to enter the exhibition hall for the Korea International Art Fair held at Coex in Gangnam District, southern Seoul on Oct. 13, 2021. [NEWS1]

The reality of hiring in art

The problem begins with the supply and demand of available positions in the art world. Each year, approximately 48,000 undergraduates earn degrees in the arts at Korean universities, according to data compiled by the Culture Ministry. However, the number of job postings on Art More, an industry job information site run by the Korea Arts Management Service, averaged just 3,523 per year over the last five years, according to the service.

This discrepancy between the number of available positions and qualified graduates has led to an unusual hiring system in the art world , where personal connections and who-you-know play far more important roles in “getting in” than they do in other industries, according to sources. With far more candidates than available positions, employers can rely on informal networks rather than open recruitment.

“Since the industry here is quite saturated and most people hold both master’s and doctoral degrees, internal reputation is very important,” said Hwang (alias), another intern at a commercial gallery in Seoul. “You definitely need to have some connections, and it certainly feels like a closed society. Once you get in, it’s easy to get around and make connections, but I feel like finding the entrance itself is difficult.”

For those already inside the field, these dynamics are often understood less as isolated problems than as a reflection of the industry’s structure.

Job seekers read notices on positions at a job fair held at a venue in Seocho District, southern Seoul on March 31. [YONHAP]

“The industry size and scale of the art world is so small that it is embarrassing, even, to call it an ‘industry,’” said Yee So-wa, a curator who runs a small gallery that changes locations for each show. “The pie itself is so small, so there really isn’t much left to share.”

The smallness of the pie is felt most sharply at the bottom. With limited revenue and few full-time positions, cost pressures tend to be absorbed by entry-level employees. In a sector where margins are thin and positions are few, the burden tends to fall on interns and assistants — those responsible for keeping exhibitions running, yet whose labor remains largely invisible and undercompensated.

A further complication is the lack of data on the labor conditions of gallery staff. While the government conducts annual surveys of artists, there are no official statistics tracking those working in commercial galleries. Even the Korean Artists Welfare Foundation, established to support arts workers, does not systematically collect such data.

This lack of visibility is not accidental, according to Ryu Jae-rin, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs.

“Artistic labor often falls outside conventional statistical frameworks, as it rarely takes the form of stable, full-time employment,” Ryu said. “Instead, artists and cultural workers frequently move between freelance, project-based and informal contracts, making them difficult to capture through existing administrative systems.”

“In systems where work is organized around short-term contracts and uncertain future opportunities, those with less experience and weaker bargaining power are more likely to face the most precarious conditions,” he added.

Visitors look around artwork at the Galleries Art Fair held at Suwon Convention Center in Suwon, Gyeonggi on June 26, 2025. [NEWS1]

What the job actually looks like

The gap between what working in a gallery looks like from the outside and what it demands in practice is, by most accounts, considerable.

“The image people have of a curator — always dressed up, handling important works, speaking with authority on art — that’s just on the surface, and the actual work is usually just hard labor,” said Kim (alias), another intern at a gallery in the Gyeonggi area.

The gap between image and reality is just the beginning. Workers describe an environment in which the boundaries of their job description were consistently ignored. In practice, the lack of formalized roles often leads to blurred boundaries between professional and personal labor.

Park, for example, ran restaurant queues in advance of her boss’s client dinners, fielded phone calls while her employer screamed at her from an overseas business trip, and returned to the office after midnight hours when her departure had not been explicitly permitted.

Artwork is displayed in a gallery in this stock image [GETTY IMAGES KOREA]

Hwang, who began working at a Seoul gallery earlier this year, describes a different version of the same problem. In her first month on the job, she hosted three wine parties for VIP clients, handling all the duties herself.

“There were moments that were uncomfortable,” Hwang said. “Wealthy men, alcohol. Our director tried to protect us, but it isn't always easy in that situation.”

When she raised her discomfort afterward, Hwang was told that her team would no longer be required to attend such events. But the expectation that it was simply part of the job, she noted, had never been questioned.

“The work itself, of getting a young artist's first sale, seeing them light up when someone buys their piece — that part is genuinely meaningful,” Hwang said. “But that's not all the job is.”

People walk around in a gallery pictured in this stock image [GETTY IMAGES KOREA]

The math of staying

Yee, who has worked in the sector for several years, describes the financial logic of gallery work as systematically favoring those who do not need the money.

“To stay current in this field, you have to invest in yourself constantly — buying catalogs, tracking exhibitions abroad, attending biennales,” he said. “If your fixed costs are already stretching your income, none of that is possible. And that accumulation of knowledge is exactly what distinguishes people over time.”

The entry-level wage makes that investment nearly impossible for most. Park received 1.35 million won a month at her first gallery job. Hwang is currently receiving no hourly wage at all, working on the promise of a salaried contract once she demonstrates her value. The same goes for Kim, from the Gyeonggi gallery.

“This industry pays minimum wage at best,” Kim said. “If you're the one keeping your family afloat, you simply cannot stay.”

An employee walks past artwork at a gallery [GETTY IMAGES KOREA]

Experts noted that this dynamic is not unique to galleries, but reflects a structural feature of artistic labor more broadly.

“In many cases, artistic work is not compensated on a regular, monthly basis, but rather through project-based payments,” Ryu said. “This creates periods where individuals are working but not earning income, making it difficult to sustain a livelihood without additional support.”

High turnover reflects the difficulty of sustaining such conditions over time. In her first month, Hwang watched three colleagues leave — one whose father had suffered a cardiac episode and who found herself suddenly responsible for household income, one who had not been able to close enough deals and one who arrived and was gone within two days.

“From what the senior staff tell me, three months seems to be about when it tends to break,” she said.

Visitors look around artwork by James Turrell at a gallery in Yongsan District, central Seoul on June 11, 2025. [YONHAP]

What would need to change

What endures past the three-month mark, it turns out, does not look much different from what came before it. The precarity does not resolve itself through seniority, as even experienced professionals face one- to two-year contract cycles, and leadership positions at public arts institutions have increasingly been filled by administrators and political appointees rather than by arts professionals.

“You endure years of poor conditions and build real expertise, and then the door above you turns out to be just as narrow,” art critic Oh Jeong-eun said. “The hope that things will improve if you just hold on — that hope is increasingly hard to picture.”

The structural roots of the problem run deeper than any single employer’s behavior, according to experts. Demand for arts workers is vanishingly small relative to the number of people who pursue the field, a pattern that critic Oh said holds not just in Korea but globally. Arts graduates are plentiful, while stable, lasting careers are not.

Ryu echoed this concern, warning that if current conditions persist, inequality within the field is likely to deepen.

“Those with external financial support will be able to remain and accumulate experience, while others may exit early,” he said. “Over time, this can lead to a concentration of opportunities among a small group, while the majority move toward more unstable, short-term or secondary work.”

Part of the explanation lies in how slowly artistic work has come to be recognized as labor at all, according to Oh. The legal framework governing fair compensation for creative work is relatively recent in Korea, and its gaps remain visible, she pointed out.

“Arts students graduate with little grounding in labor law and no framework for understanding what constitutes fair compensation,” Oh said. “The industry absorbs them in that condition, and the cycle continues.”

Visitors are seen looking around artwork displayed at Frieze Seoul held at Coex in Gangnam District, southern Seoul on Sept. 3, 2025. [NEWS1]

Park, when asked what she would fix first, did not hesitate.

“Pay,” she said. “Passion doesn't pay rent. But give someone enough to feel like their labor is real, and they'll find a way to keep going.”

Hwang, for her part, is staying — for now. She has plans for a graduate program and, eventually, a gallery of her own. But she is also clear-eyed about what a single month has shown her.

She has watched colleagues leave one by one, each for reasons unrelated to a lack of love for the work. What she is left with is a particular conviction — that the distance between the art world and everyone outside it is, at least in part, a misunderstanding

“Galleries get treated like intimidating, exclusive spaces,” Hwang said. “But they're actually open to everyone — free to enter, free to look. You can walk in and ask what something is made of, how it's preserved, what it costs.”

Greater public engagement, she added, could also help expand the market and, in turn, improve conditions for those working within it.

“I hope people will see galleries as just a cultural space, a place for people passing through,” she said. “That way, with more people visiting, the barrier of galleries and art buying would slowly be lowered. That’s what would help those working in the art world like myself, most, in the long run.”

BY LIM JEONG-WON [[email protected]]