In 1913, still in her teens, Na Hye-seok left Korea to study oil painting in Tokyo. No Korean woman is known to have done so before her. Western-style painting was new in Korea then, and a woman making a career of it was newer still.
She wrote as well as painted. Her 1918 story Gyeonghui follows a young woman discovering who she is, the kind of person Koreans were starting to call a New Woman. The next year she joined the March First protests against Japanese rule and was jailed for it.
In 1921 she hung her oils in Seoul, the first solo show there by a Korean woman painter. By then she was married to Kim Woo-young, a lawyer who later became a diplomat.
In 1927 the couple set out for Europe and America. She traveled for about 21 months, and in Paris she studied under the painter Roger Bissière. Her colors darkened there. She came home in 1929. What happened next would cost her almost everything.