SEOUL, South Korea—There are more birds than cars and people combined on this blooming spring morning at Cheongwadae-ro, the road that cuts through the nation’s former and current seats of power.

Flanked on one side by the timeworn stone walls of Gyeongbokgung Palace, the home for 500 years of 27 monarchs from the Joseon Dynasty, and on the other, the imposing steel fences of Cheongwadae, the Korean presidential residence also known as Blue House, Cheongwadae-ro bridges Samcheong-ro on the Palace’s east and Hyoja-ro on its west. The two streets, right smack in the heart of Seoul, are lined up with art galleries, coffee shops, or combinations of the two—a testament to how much Koreans value culture and caffeine.

There are over 100 galleries and museums around Seoul, ranging from public establishments, to private galleries that renovate old structures into exhibition spaces, to a growing number of local branches of renowned global brands. Perhaps more glaring than the strength of the city’s art infrastructure is the demand it caters to.

Just last March, one of the nation’s most anticipated art events of the year opened to a rousing success at the Seoul Museum of Art with the first retrospective in Korea of influential 20th century British artist David Hockney. Cocurated by the London-based institution Tate with 133 pieces on display, the ongoing show garnered 40,000 people on its first four days.

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea (MMCA), meanwhile, draws a guest count of 2.8 million people per year for all its four branches around the nation, with the Seoul branch attracting almost half of it with up to 7,000 visitors per day.

Blockbuster exhibits that attract more than 100,000 viewers over the course of its run have ramped up in Korea as general interest on the arts rose over the past few years. According to art professor and art magazine publisher Kim Bokki, there has always been a place for the arts in the hearts of Koreans, but the recent breakthrough didn’t totally spring from internal development. Rather, he sees it as a reaction to an external force: the growing global popularity of a Korean art movement that emerged in the 1970s.

Tansaekhwa, or Dansaekwha, took the international art scene by storm just a little over five years ago, pushing the Korean art market to become the 10th biggest in the world in 2016, according to Artprice.com. The movement is characterized as modernist abstraction, spearheaded by artists who lived through the Korean and Japanese wars, and are now in their 80s.

These people, as an Art Radar Journal article writes, “sought to escape the devastating social situation through new art styles.” Pioneers such as Lee Ufan, Chung Chang-Sup and Yun Hyong-Keun, among others, produced nonfigurative paintings in neutral colors that are less rational and conceptual in subject, but more material-oriented.

Critics, however, compare Tansaekhwa with its contemporary Western models. In a 2014 interview with White Hot Magazine, renowned curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath talked about their New York show, titled Overcoming The Modern. Dansaekhwa: The Korean Monochrome Movement, and drew the line between the two minimalist movements.

“Unlike the reductionism of what is perceived as minimalism in the West, [the Tansaekhwa artists’] approach is more about accretion and layering,” Bardaouil and Fellrath said. “This is where the energy in these works reside.”

Kim, the Korean art professor, doubled down on the movement’s purity, saying that the Tansaekhwa pioneers were not influenced by Western artists as they do not speak English.

“They don’t exactly know the concept of Western abstract art, but they have been doing this [process] for so many years that they have created their own style of abstract art,” he said.

As curator Henry Meyric Hughes put it in his 2014 Art in Asia story, titled The International Art Scene and the Status of Dansaekhwa, “As opposed to Western modernists, who revolted against mainstream academic art and aesthetic idealism, and wanted to be provocative, subversive, obscure and defiant of systems of hierarchy and authority, Tansaekhwa artists sought to connect to their roots,” which he pointed to as “combination of elements from the cultural traditions of the Joseon Dynasty” and “oriental spiritualism.”

Kim added that the muted colors of Tansaekhwa pieces differ from that of Western arts. The Korean artists, he said, were inspired by nature and their everyday lives.

For one, paper was a prominent material in traditional Korean architecture, often used to protect doors and windows. These papers darkened over time, as well as from smoke when people cooked rice using wood. Kim said these dark, marks on papers inspired certain Tansaekhwa artists in their creation, the same way how Korean flowers informed their shades of red and yellow and pink.

The movement also focuses on the “meditative aspect of art production,” as well as “the relationship between materials, materials and creator, artwork and viewer” as an “exploration of the physical limitations of materials and their ability to interact with the viewer,” goes the Art Radar Journal story.

The movement’s phenomenal rise on the international stage began in 2013 when Joan Kee, an art history associate professor at the University of Michigan, released a book, titled Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method. Her work was the first publication on the topic written in English and basically introduced the under-the-radar Korean art style to the West.

The following year, three major exhibitions showcased Tansaekhwa artists in Seoul, Paris and Los Angeles, triggering a flurry of shows featuring the movement.

There was no bigger benefactor from the developments than the octogenarian pioneers of the Tansaekhwa. According to figures from a 2015 story by The New Yorker, the auction record of then-81-year-old artist Ha Chong-Hyun was $13,303, with half of his eight auctioned works going unsold in a span six years. Then the craze hit and he watched “45 of his paintings go on the auction block, with nine selling for more than a hundred thousand dollars.”

“To be honest, it was not possible to make a living making this kind of work in Korea,” Ha said in the story. “I was so tired and it’s such welcome news.”

The institutional and commercial obsession hit its climax in 2015, when Seoul-based Kukje Gallery mounted in collaborations the highly commended group exhibition Dansaekhwa as part of the official Collateral Event program of the 56th Venice Biennale.

Kim said that’s when general art appreciation in Korea really took off, saying “because there are many exhibits about Korean art around the world, art awareness in Korea is also increasing.”

He added, “Tansaekhwa is what made Korean art very famous globally. That’s why even the general public, like students and housewives, can access the abstract works of Tansaekhwa easier than before.”

In May 18, the MMCA Seoul opened Park Seo-Bo: The Untiring Endeavor, a retrospective on the venerated Tansaekhwa pioneer. On view until September 1,

the show draws in crowds by the droves, with 160 pieces on display at the facility’s premier spaces, Galleries 1 and 2.

Kim said there were many attempts by Korean artists to make their mark on the global stage prior to the rise of Tansaekhwa, but the minimalist movement was the one to make it due to the global audience’s current penchant for historically charged pieces, as well as the universality of the genre.

And now that the art world has turned its head on Korean art, Kim said the global and local momentum of the nation’s art boom could be sustained the same way how all of it started.

“Everything began with a Korean art gallery recognizing the beauty of Tansaekhwa. I think there should be more world-class art galleries around Korea to introduce Korean art to the international viewers,” he said. “Secondly, I see so many good Korean artists who just don’t have enough opportunity to be introduced worldwide. The major barrier is language.”

To ensure the continued and wider exposer of contemporary Korean art, which Kim characterizes as “dynamic” and “strong,” he said there should be more materials on Korean art written in English, along with more investment from the Korean government and business conglomerates.

“With this,” he said, “maybe we will have an even bigger chance in succeeding and introducing Korean art to the world.”

Next week: A look at the current shows of some of Seoul’s most famous galleries and museums.