For the first two years after joining Pace Gallery, Lee Young-joo found herself constantly shuttling between Seoul and Hong Kong. In 2015, the blue-chip New York gallery was looking toward Hong Kong, not Seoul. The Asian art market was expanding rapidly and the world’s major dealers were following the money into China and Hong Kong. Lee was brought in as a senior director to help with Pace’s growing Hong Kong operation, where she watched the city’s art world gradually transform. But what she saw made her think about her home country. “Dealers and artists from around the world were coming together in Hong Kong, and I was able to watch firsthand how that complex ecosystem grew and was absorbed back into the local market,” she said. “I kept thinking that I wanted to see something like that happen in Korea, too.” Korean collectors were already traveling to Hong Kong to attend fairs and buy art. To Lee, that suggested something the international galleries had yet to fully recognize: Korea did not lack a market. Its infrastructure simply had not caught up with its growing appetite