South Korean artist Park Seo-bo. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Back home, in 2014, her gallery held a show of dansaekhwa in Seoul that made the genre even more popular with Koreans. Soon active promotion outside South Korea started.

Some of the artists' works have been sold at much higher rates over the years.

But she explains the success of the art is not fortuitous. In the 1960s, minimalism was popular in the West, such as in Germany, Italy and the United States. Works of the representative artists from the time are already expensive for buyers. Dansaekhwa has been under valued for a long time and was rediscovered only a few years ago.

The elderly artists of this genre in particular have struggled for long and have lived through the country's many twists and turns in history. At least their works survived, says Lee.

"Bringing dansaekhwa to China will open a door for more kinds of Korean art to be shown here in the future," she says.

Contact the writer at dengzhangyu@chinadaily.com.cn