South Korea has recovered an 18th-century Buddhist painting that was illegally taken to Japan around 100 years ago.

The Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation says the U.S. Hermitage Museum & Gardens in Virginia donated the painting to the National Museum of Korea with the help of the Korean division of U.S. computer game developer, Riot Games.

The painting is known to have been stolen from a Buddhist temple in Korea and give to a Japanese art dealer during Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

It was displayed in the U.S. in 1942 and confiscated by the U.S. government after the break out of fighting in the Pacific during World War Two.

The National Museum of Korea says the three-point-one meter by three-point-one meter painting depicts Buddha giving a sermon.