Editor’s Note
This analysis of South Korea’s 2025 art auction market highlights a historic shift, with works by Marc Chagall achieving the top two prices for the first time. The data also reveals a competitive landscape, where Seoul Auction led in total sales, while the overall hammer rate points to a selective market.
2025 Year-End Settlement for the Domestic Art Auction MarketAn analysis of eight auction houses by the Korea Art Appraisal Association reveals that the top two highest-priced works were by Chagall, a first in the history of domestic auctions. The overall hammer rate was 53.4%, with Seoul Auction’s total hammer price exceeding K Auction’s by approximately 10 billion won.
[Seoul=Newsis] Reporter Park Hyun-joo, Art Specialist = The 2025 domestic art auction market rebounded thanks to the strong performance of Marc Chagall’s works. The annual total hammer price reached approximately 140.5 billion won, marking a return to growth after three years.
According to the 2025 year-end settlement for the domestic art auction market released on the 29th by the Korea Art Appraisal Association (Chairman Kim Young-seok) and Artprice (CEO Ko Yoon-jung), the total hammer price for pure fine art auctions conducted by eight domestic auction houses amounted to about 140.5 billion won. This represents an increase of 25.4 billion won compared to the previous year (approximately 115.1 billion won in 2024).
This analysis tallied the results of online and offline auctions conducted from January to the end of December by eight companies: Seoul Auction, K Auction, MyArt Auction, i Auction, Rise Art, A Auction, Khan Auction, and Continue Auction. Other items such as liquor, luxury goods, and jewelry were excluded.
In 2025, a total of 18,339 works were offered at auction, of which 9,797 were hammered, resulting in a hammer rate of 53.4%. Although the number of works offered decreased by about 4,600 and hammered works by about 1,000 compared to the previous year, the hammer rate is the highest in the past three years. This is interpreted as an indicator that the art market is restructuring from quantitative expansion to a focus on qualitative selection.
The top hammer total in 2024 was Kim Whan-ki (approx. 7.37 billion won), in 2023 it was Lee Ufan (approx. 13.47 billion won), in 2022 it was Yayoi Kusama (approx. 27.67 billion won), and in 2021 it was Lee Ufan (approx. 39.49 billion won).
Chagall also claimed the record for the highest price of a single work in 2025. Last November, at Seoul Auction’s major auction, Chagall’s works took both first and second place with prices of 9.4 billion won and 5.9 billion won, respectively. This is the first time in domestic auction history that works by the same artist have simultaneously secured the top two highest prices on a single auction day.
Another notable case involves Kim Whan-ki’s identical work being hammered at the same price in two separate auctions. Kim Whan-ki’s ‘Untitled’ (1969) was hammered for 780 million won in both K Auction’s January and October auctions, ranking joint 17th in the highest price list for a single work.
In terms of auction house share, Seoul Auction ranked first with 47%, followed by K Auction with 40%. While both major auction houses had identical hammer rates of 52%, the total hammer price showed a gap of about 10 billion won: Seoul Auction at 66 billion won and K Auction at 56.6 billion won. This is analyzed as a result of Seoul Auction leading the market fervor by placing four Chagall works within the top 30 highest hammer prices.
