Court rules Nam June Paik works belong to late Daewoo chief's widow

A Seoul court has ruled that two Nam June Paik works belong to Jeong Hee-ra, the widow of late Daewoo Group founder and chairman Kim Woo-joong.

The Seoul Central District Court's Civil Division 34, presided over by Judge Kim Chang-mo, ruled Saturday in favor of Jeong in a lawsuit she filed against Wooyang Industrial Development — formerly Daewoo Development — seeking the return of movable property, according to Yonhap and legal sources.

Jeong had sought the return of 188 artworks held by the Wooyang Museum of Art. The court ordered the return of only three pieces it recognized as hers: two works by Nam June Paik and one by German artist Sigmar Polke.

Jeong filed the suit last July, arguing that Wooyang Industrial Development had been holding her artworks without returning them. She said she had placed works she owned on display and in storage at the Gyeongju Hilton Hotel and the Wooyang Museum of Art — both operated by Wooyang Industrial Development, which her husband controlled around 1991 — and that the pieces were never returned when the company changed hands.

The court acknowledged that Jeong had purchased and owned the three works, basing its finding on testimony from a Wooyang Museum curator, the head of the gallery that sold the works to Jeong, and a former member of her secretarial staff.

The court also cited an official letter Jeong sent to Wooyang Industrial Development in 2014, in which she wrote that she had "repeatedly said over the decades that the various artworks and objects I purchased with personal funds would be made available to Wooyang Industrial Development free of charge, and that I would reclaim them whenever necessary," and demanded their prompt return.

However, the court declined to recognize her ownership of the remaining 185 works, finding "no objective evidence that Jeong purchased them."

Jeong argued that while she served as director of the Wooyang Museum of Art, she had created collection record cards indicating the ownership of each artwork, assigning the code "M" to pieces she personally owned.

The museum curator who prepared those cards, however, testified at trial that the "M" code was sometimes used even when the owner was unknown, and that it was later changed to a different code if the actual owner raised an objection.

On that basis, the court concluded that "the mere fact that some artworks are listed with the code 'M' on the collection record cards is not sufficient to conclude that they belong to Jeong."