Here’s a geopolitical trivia question for you: What do real estate values in South Korea have to do with the gallery landscape of Chelsea?

According to the director of the latest Korean gallery to open a branch in New York, the answer is: A lot. The director of the New York outpost of Gana Art, Bong Lee, said that the sharp increase in the capital gains tax, and other restrictions on real estate deals imposed by South Korea’s former president, Roh Moo-Hyun, led many Koreans to look to new areas of investment, particularly art. The result was a boon for Korea’s art galleries, several of which, including Gana Art, Kukje Gallery, PYO Gallery, and Arario have expanded internationally in recent years.

“For the past two years, the market in Korea has been growing substantially,” Mr. Lee, whose father, Ho-Jae Lee, founded Gana Art in 1983, said. “People started getting the notion that when you invest in art you make a fat profit. From that time on, people start talking about art and taking a genuine interest in it.”

When Mr. Lee’s father started the business, he would go to Europe and get consignments of works by 20th-century artists such as Giacometti, Warhol, and Rothko, which he would then sell in Korea. Today, Gana Art shows contemporary Western artists, including Keith Tyson, Vanessa Beecroft, and Joel Shapiro, in Korea, as well as representing both emerging and established Asian and Korean artists. The gallery opened a branch in Paris 10 years ago; Mr. Lee said that Paris is “quiet these days,” so the gallery was eager to expand to New York.

The inaugural exhibition in Gana Art’s new two-floor, 7,400-square-foot space on West 25th Street will present works by the photographer Bien-U Bae and the sculptor Yong Ho Ji. Gana Art has also launched an artist-residency program, offering three- to six-month residencies for Korean artists in New York City.

The other two Korean galleries to open in Chelsea recently are Arario, which opened a 20,000-square-foot space on West 25th Street in November, and Tina Kim Gallery, which moved to West 25th Street from West 57th in September. Tina Kim is the daughter of Hyun-Sook Lee, the founder of one of Korea’s largest galleries, Kukje. Like Ho-Jae Lee, Mrs. Lee started her business in 1982, doing secondary-market sales of major 20th-century artists. Tina Kim Gallery also does secondary-market sales of artists from Louise Bourgeois to Richard Prince; in addition, she has a small group of primary-market artists.

Arario was founded in 1989 by the Korean collector Ci Kim as essentially a private museum to his show his collection. In 2004, it expanded to Beijing and became a commercial gallery. It now has outposts in Seoul, Cheonan, Beijing, and New York. According to a director in the New York gallery, Juhl Lee, Arario is pursuing two paths: one for the commercial part of the business and one for the non-commercial part. In a couple of years, Mr. Lee said, Mr. Kim will start another museum in Korea to educate the public about major Asian artists.