Later she was appointed as professor of Oriental Painting at Hong-Ik University in Seoul where she taught for decades, was honored with many awards, and elected to be a member of the Korean Academy of Art. Her paintings came to be extremely popular and costly, but her relationship with the gallery owners was not always smooth because she did not like selling her paintings unless she had to support her family or had other necessities. She often spent months to finish a painting, adding layers of color and texture.  The layers on her works became thicker and more textured in the 70s and 80s. She also experimented with a variety of techniques, including scratching the surface of her paintings with sharp tools; through her intense work ethic and her consistent experimentation, she developed the most unique style in Korean Oriental painting.

In 1991, when she was at the height of her career, a national scandal involving a forgery of her work broke out, and she suffered a strong emotional blow. The forgery was in the possession of the Korean National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, under the Department of Culture. She insisted that the painting was not hers by citing all the differences in techniques and expression. The painting turned out to be a part of the confiscated assets of the former KCIA chief. Although the museum admitted that they had never had an appropriate authentication process, they started a severe smear campaign against her in collaboration with the commercial gallery owners. Never complicit by nature, she persistently claimed that the painting was a fake.

In 1998, she donated most of the paintings that she called  “part of myself” to the Seoul City Museum of Art, and came to New York to live with one of her daughters. She passed away in 2015.

The Seoul City Museum of Art, in the heart of Seoul, contains her permanent exhibition, where art lovers and citizens can visit her artwork anytime.