As of the beginning of this year, a comprehensive survey by the Korea Heritage Service (KHS) and Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation (OKCHF) has identified 121,143 instances of Korean artifacts located overseas, representing a total of 256,190 individual items.
This extensive inventory is based on data collected from 801 institutions, including museums and art galleries, across 29 countries, notably Japan, the United States, and Germany.
Japan holds the largest collection of Korean cultural relics, possessing 110,611 pieces, which constitutes 43.2 percent of all Korean cultural properties found abroad.
The United States ranks second with approximately 68,000 Korean artifacts, followed by Germany with over 16,000, and Great Britain with roughly 15,000 items.
It is widely believed that many of these artifacts were either stolen or looted during periods of foreign intervention in the late 19th century and throughout Japan’s colonial rule over Korea from 1910 to 1945. Others were acquired through legitimate transactions.
The KHS and the OKCHF are actively engaged in efforts to repatriate cultural artifacts that are suspected of having been illegally removed from Korea.
Up to January, the OKCHF has successfully facilitated the return of 2,855 items to Korea.
