South Korean Authorities Bust Lee Ufan Forgery Ring
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency announced that it has arrested three people who allegedly forged around forty of artist Lee Ufan’s works, Kwon Mee-yoo of the Korea Times reports.
Two dealers—a husband and wife identified as Kim and Ku—and a painter, whose surname is Park, are suspected of creating and distributing counterfeits of Ufan’s “From Point” and “From Line” series between November 2012 and 2014. The dealers paid Park $260,000 for the fakes then sold them to a gallerist for roughly $2.5 million.
A similar investigation resulted in the arrest of a Korean gallery operator in June, but the police said that the two cases are unrelated. The indicted gallerist, referred to by his surname Hyeong, made $1.1 million from selling three forgeries. When officers asked Ufan to confirm that the works were fakes he refused. After a four-hour inspection of the canvases he determined that “the use of breath, rhythm, and color were all my techniques.” Despite Ufan’s claim that the works are his, Hyeong confessed to the crime at a hearing at the Seoul Central District Court in July.
The rise in forgery cases has resulted in a new law proposed by the ministry of culture, sports, and tourism that will require art distributors such as galleries and auction houses to have licenses before they can sell artworks and stipulate harsher punishments for forgery crimes.
