Publishing this book on Korean modern art has taken us on a long journey. It was 2009 when we organized a panel called “Rethinking ‘Influences’ of Modern Art in Korea: Beyond Colonial Discourses” at the annual conference of the Association for Asian Studies held in Philadelphia. We were joined by panelists Hwi-yeon Jin, Moo-jung Jeong, Jenny Jungsil Lee, and Kevin Chua, but I (Woo) could not be there, because I was in the late stages of preg- nancy. Then we were both busy teaching and raising young children. It was 2015 when we picked up momentum again. We organized the panel “Modernism in East Asia: Fluidity and Fragmentation” at the American Comparative Literature Association’s annual conference in Seattle. This panel helped us galvanize important topics and unique features of modernism in Korean visual culture in the larger context of East Asia.