Korean abstract painting, a post-war development often lumped under the umbrella term Dansaekhwa, has exploded in popularity in the last five years.

Born in the 1970s, as a generation that had endured the Korean War came into its own intellectually, the movement was entirely off the Western radar until the last decade, when prestigious galleries like Galerie Perrotin, Kukje Gallery, and Blum and Poe had exhibitions, Christie’s had a wildly successful auction and The New Yorker shone a spotlight on the rediscovered genre.

The highly textured paint strokes canvases, often in monochrome or two tones, have captured the interest of audiences in the West and Asia alike recently, with primary market prices shooting up 200 percent from 2014 to 2016, according to Artsy.

Frieze New York 2017 at Randall's Island. Photo: Daniel Zuchnik / Getty Images

Comparisons to American abstract expressionism are inevitable, but probably unnecessary. At the moment, you can buy—or just peruse—these imposing works at Frieze New York, where Gallery Hyundai is showing Korean artists who approach abstraction from different directions, and at Tina Kim Gallery in New York, where artist Kim Yong Ik (who worked in the post-Dansaekhwa genre earlier in his career, before an identity crisis) has a show until June 17.

Ik’s career trajectory—he rejected abstraction during the 1980s, when he felt the political repression in Korea mandated he make work more rooted in the world—is a reminder of the navigations many Korean painters, from the 70s until now, have faced. Some have embraced the duality of West and East and striven to incorporate both. Others have rejected the notion that Western abstract painting, though contemporaneous with that of Korea, had any effect on it whatsoever.

Kim Whanki, Untitled (1972), on view at Frieze New York.