The Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation, under the Korea Heritage Service, announced the return of the Ten Kings Painting: “Since 2023, the Sokcho Cultural Heritage Restoration Committee and Sinheungsa Temple have been in discussions with the museum and conducted a thorough investigation. In October 2024, they officially submitted a return request to the museum, and after several rounds of negotiations, an agreement was reached for its repatriation.”
The Ten Kings are a set of ten judges who determine the severity of human sins in the afterlife, with the full set comprising ten scrolls. Each scroll depicts one king and a scene from hell. In 2020, six pieces were returned from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and this marks the seventh. The whereabouts of the remaining three are still unknown.
The Ten Kings are believed to have looted during the Korean War. The Tenth King of Hell (1798) was purchased by the Museum in 2007. The work is believed to have been originally housed in the Sinheung Temple (Sinheungsa) in Sokcho, Gangwon Province, in South Korea. At The Met, the work was exhibited as part of the Museum’s Korean Art (2012) and Arts of Korea (2008) exhibitions.
The return is the result of a collaborative investigation between the Museum and representatives from the Temple and the Sokcho Committee for the Return of Cultural Heritage who visited the Museum several times to work with the Museum’s curators and researchers regarding the work’s provenance. In 2025, the Museum and Temple representatives agreed the painting should be returned to the Temple.
