The Metropolitan Museum of Art has returned an 18th-century Korean painting, *The Tenth King of Hell* (1798), to Sinheungsa Temple in Sokcho, South Korea. The work, part of a ten-panel series called *Siwangdo* depicting kings of the afterlife, was illicitly taken from the temple in 1954 during the U.S. military presence after the Korean War. The Met purchased the painting in 2007 from a collector via an LLC linked to Bonhams’s Chinese art head. The repatriation was coordinated with the Sokcho Committee for the Return of Cultural Heritage and the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism. Six other panels were previously returned by LACMA in 2020; three remain abroad.
This return underscores a growing trend among major Western museums to address colonial-era and wartime looting. The Met’s 2023 Cultural Property Initiative and its recent provenance transparency in the reopened Rockefeller Wing signal institutional shifts toward restitution. However, critics argue such gestures are insufficient. The case highlights ongoing tensions between museum collections and the rightful cultural heritage of source communities, particularly for objects taken during armed conflicts like the Korean War.