Gisan(箕山) Kim Jun-geun(金俊根) was a late 19th century genre painter, who produced works for the foreigners working in Wonsan(元山), Busan(釜山) and Jemulpo (today’s Incheon 仁川); these being ports which had been opened for foreign trade. The fact that Kim Jun-geun’s clientele was mainly European is suggested by references to him in records written by those who visited Korea at this time, and by the many works of Kim jun-geun which are now housed in museums in Europe, the United States and Japan. I believe that Kim’s paintings were produced under circumstances similar to those of contemporary Chinese export paintings(輸出畵 or 外銷畵), and for that reason this paper explores his works through comparative analysis with such works. However, it should be noted that although Chinese export paintings include not only genre scenes but also representations of flowers and birds(花鳥), architecture(建築) and sceneries(風景), a characteristic of Kim Jun-geun is the fact that he mostly produced genre paintings. About 1193 paintings by Kim jun-geun have so far been identified in 17 collections. According to the preface of Korean Games by Stewart Culin, published in 1895, it is believed that those in the Smithsonian Institution are Kim’s authentic works. Having closely analyzed them, paying particular attention to the style of the seals, the handwriting and the Chinese characters, I have identified works which share similar characteristics in the following collections: the Guimet Museum in France, Hamburg Museum for Ethnology in Germany and the National Museum of Denmark. That many comparable pictures under the sobriquet of Gisan(箕山) have survived suggests that, like Chinese export paintings, they may have been made in a workshop and that Kim was the most important painter within this organization. Since Kim’s paintings were made for foreigners they are markedly different in style and subject matter from those paintings which either served a purely aesthetic function or communicated confucian teachings. The same can be said of Chinese export paintings. It is in their compositional arrangements and subject matters that Kim Jun-geun’s works share most characteristics with export paintings. In contrast to 18th century genre painters, such as Kim Hong-do and Shin Yun-bok, Kim placed less emphasis on human expression. Instead, in his market scenes for example, he detailed the types of products that were being sold, and through the composition accentuated the actions that took place. Moreover, prior to Kim Jun-geun’s time, funerals, ancestor worship and punishments were never painted, but through such scenes foreigners were able to gain an understanding of Korean culture despite having no knowledge of ban’eul or Chinese characters. In other words, Kim’s paintings served as a visual encyclopedia of Korean people, their lives and their customs. Kim’s paintings share many similarities with 19th century photographs of local customs which, like Kim's works, place less emphasis on the people featured and instead stress their actions. Also in their subject matters they parallel Kim’s works as reflected in their recording of various ceremonies, such as ‘coming of age’, marriage, funeral, and ancestor worship as well as games played by women and children and various occupations. Also these photographs were sold to foreigners and as their pictorial quality surpassed that of Kim’s paintings, the latter gradually ceased to exist. In conclusion, not only was Kim Jun-geun instrumental in furthering 19th century genre painting, but his works served an important didactic role as disseminators of Korean culture and customs to foreigners. Furthermore, his paintings stand as examples of how works of art were produced at the end of the 19th century and can therefore be said to be highly representative of the cultural environment of this time.