Bae Un-seong (裵雲成 / 배운성, 1900-78), was the very first Korean who have studied art in Europe and completed Berlin National School of Fine Arts before settling in Paris. While in Europe, Bae often travelled around the continent and held a series of solo exhibitions in Germany, France, Austria and Czechoslovakia. In 1940, Bae Un-seong returned to Korea, but after a few years he left Seoul for Pyeongyang in 1948. Therefore his achievements as one of the founding-fathers of modern Korean art have not been widely revealed until the ban on the works of artists which gone to the North was lifted in the late 1980s. Additionally, there were not many of his paintings known to survive until almost 50 of his works were discovered in Paris in the 1990s, which was followed by his retrospective exhibition held at Deoksugung in 2001.

Ambassador Jaroslav Olša, jr. became interested in Bae´s life and work two years ago while researching on Czech-Korean ties and finding the mention of his exhibition in Czech article published in 1945. When he found that two of his exhibitions were held in the most important Czechoslovak cities, Prague and Brno, in 1936, it sparked his further interest. Later discovery of exhibition catalogue of Bae´s exhibition held in Brno showed, that Bae exhibited not less than 107 pieces of art, among them oil paintings, aquarelles and prints. Both Czechoslovak exhibitions had also a wide media coverage as around 50 Czech and German articles were published, some of them showing the photos of some lost and unknown Bae´s paintings. A thorough search revealed that at least two painting of Bae Un-seong could be found in the Czech Republic, and the first one was located as of now.

Czech Ambassador to Korea Jaroslav Olša, jr. and Korean Ambassador to the Czech Republic Moon Ha-young posing with the newly discovered painting „Weltreise“ of Bae Un-seong at castle of Hrubý Rohozec last week.