Lee Jung-seob (April 10, 1916 in Pyeongannamdo – September 6, 1956 in Seoul) was a Korean artist most known for his oil paintings, such as White Ox.

His family owned an extensive area of land, and Lee's brother, who was twelve years older than him, ran the biggest department store at the time in Wonsan.

In 1930, he began his art studies at Osan High School in Jeongju, which was independently financed by Korean Christian nationalists whose mission was to raise next-generation leaders in opposition to Japanese colonialism.

He abruptly quit in 1937 and entered Bunka Gakuin (Japanese: 文化學院), a liberal private academy that was more fascinated with the avant-garde than Teikoku.

Amid his studies, Lee joined some of his senior classmates in displaying his works at an exhibition organized by the Free Artists' Association (自由美術家協会, Jiyū Bijutsuka Kyōkai).

At Bunka Gakuin, he fell deeply in love with junior colleague Yamamoto Masako (Japanese: 山本方子, Korean name Lee Nam-deok, in hangul: 이남덕) who would later become his wife.

Despite the rising tensions of the Pacific War, Lee was relatively safe within his school boundaries, gaining a liberal education in the face of imperial militarism.

Lee continued to paint and organize art exhibitions in Seoul and Pyongyang undeterred by the wartime emergency in Colonial Korea.

The regime also restricted Lee's works as officials monitored him closely due to his brother being a successful entrepreneur, his Japanese wife hailing from a wealthy Catholic family, and himself an artist who expressed his thoughts and ideas in his paintings.

Part of a mass exodus to South Korea, Lee found refuge in Busan with his wife and two sons in December of that year.

Finding Busan overcrowded with other refugees and seeking a warmer climate, Lee moved his family further south to Jeju Island, the very southern tip of Korea.

Lee's painting A Family on the Road (1951) shows a father leading a golden bull and a wagon with a mother and two sons tossing flowers and searching for Utopia.

[4] Despite hardships, Lee sketched and painted his surroundings, inspired by the local scenery, and gained new subject matter in seagulls, crabs, fish, the coast, and his growing children.

He picked up a job as a crafts teacher and continued to work, producing paintings, magazine illustrations, and book covers, and participating in exhibitions.

Ku Sang helped Lee organize another final exhibition at the Gallery of the US Information Service in Daegu in April, which reaped even worse results than the one in Seoul.

[1] Lee inherited a love for Goguryeo tomb murals and paintings, which shone through in his vigorous line work, deep colors, circular compositions, and symbolic motifs of animals.

Lee always yearned to paint a large-scale mural in a public space for the enjoyment of many people, but his dreams were never realized due to the turmoil of the Korean War and its aftermath.

Unable to afford typical art materials, Lee created an innovative new technique for making line paintings on pieces of tinfoil from cigarette packs.

[6] Despite his years of strife, poverty, transience, and warfare, Lee produced paintings that laughed at the harshness of reality, expressing the blithe, childlike beauty of happy days spent with his family.

Throughout his life, Lee created numerous paintings centered on the subject of the 'cow,' a creature that held a special place in his artistic universe.

Scholars and historians[7][1] have argued that this subject matter was an especially bold choice during a time when Korean motifs were actively repressed by colonial Japan.

The museum grounds begin on a path surrounded by lush vines and flora at the bottom of a hill leading to the thatched roof house where Lee and his family lived after arriving in Seogwipo.

A reproduction of his piece Fantasy of Seogwipo (1951), showing birds and people living in harmony on a warm day, while Korean peaches hang heavy and sweet from the treetops above, is on display at the gallery.

Due to Lee's rise in popularity over the years, the monetary value of his work has skyrocketed, making it difficult for the museum to acquire pieces for its collection.