Seoul’s Kansong museum hands a pair of Qing dynasty lions back to China
The marble guardians, bought at a 1933 Yamanaka & Co. auction in Osaka, had flanked the entrance to Bohwagak since 1938.
Government and Cultural Heritage
The Kansong Art Museum in Seoul’s Seongbuk district transferred a pair of Qing dynasty marble lions to China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration at a ceremony on Thursday, ending their 88 years at the museum’s front door.
The museum and the National Museum of Korea signed a document turning over ownership to Chinese cultural authorities, China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration said in a statement.
Jeon Hyeong-pil, the collector known as Kansong, bought them in 1933 at an Osaka auction run by Japanese dealer Yamanaka & Co. They were installed at the entrance of Bohwagak, the museum building designed by architect Park Kil-yong and completed in 1938.
Five Chinese specialists examined the pair before the handover and dated them to the Qing, describing the marble as quarried in Beijing or northern China and identifying them as gate guardians from a princely residence, Kyunghyang reported. The experts called them “an outstanding piece” with historical, artistic and scientific value.
The South China Morning Post described the lions as looted, citing expert belief that Japanese forces took them from an imperial residence in the early 20th century.
Yamanaka & Co., the firm that sold them, was the largest dealer of Chinese antiquities in the world at that time. In 1912, it bought the contents of Prince Gong’s Beijing mansion from the prince’s descendant Puwei, shipped the objects to Japan, and sold them in New York, London and Osaka.
The U.S. government seized the company’s American assets in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act and auctioned the stock in 1944.
Jeon, who died in 1962, told associates that the lions were Chinese objects and should be returned, Chinese officials said in the statement.
The museum tried to donate them in 2016 but relations between Seoul and Beijing deteriorated over the deployment of a U.S. THAAD missile defense battery, the South China Morning Post reported.
The Kansong Art and Culture Foundation asked the National Museum of Korea to handle the transfer.
The national museum and the Chinese heritage administration opened talks in December 2025 and signed the donation agreement on January 5 at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing during President Lee Jae Myung’s summit with Xi Jinping.
The lions were set to leave for China on Friday, Chinese officials said. They will be restored and displayed at a Chinese national museum before the end of the year.
The Kansong Art Museum plans to install a pair of 19th-century Korean stone tigers where the lions stood.
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