National Museum sets attendance record

A record 4 million people have visited the National Museum of Korea this year, the highest annual number since the state-run institution relocated to central Seoul’s Yongsan-gu in 2005, the museum said Wednesday.

The museum, which is the largest museum in the country housing more than 1.5 million artifacts and showcasing about 10,000 pieces in regular exhibitions, marked the occasion by presenting the 4 millionth visitor with gifts.

“One of my friends told me to go visit the museum because it is really beautiful,” said Sam Nicoles, a tourist who traveled from Washington on a two-week trip to Seoul.

“It’s an honor,” he added, as he received unexpected gifts from the museum that included a replica of the Gilt-bronze Incense Burner of Baekje, a national treasure.

Nicoles is one of many foreign travelers driving up attendance. The museum had around 170,000 foreign visitors this year, compared to about 70,000 last year

“That’s still almost a 30 percent jump from the pre-COVID-19 levels in 2019,” the museum said, attributing the surge to a rising awareness of Korean culture, a change the museum says was prompted by the institution’s special exhibitions and activities that have aimed at reaching out to international visitors.

The record attendance this year, the museum added, owes largely to visits by Koreans who are increasingly finding the museum stimulating not only “intellectually but visually,” according to one visitor who watched Wednesday’s ceremony celebrating the new record.

“The museum has really changed from what I see,” said Kim Min-jung, a freelancer in her 30s who likened her visits so far to trips to museums elsewhere, like the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

“It’s a treat for the mind and the eyes,” Kim said, referring to her previous visit to “The Six Centuries of Beauty in the Habsburg Empire” -- a special exhibition that ran from October last year to March this year. The show presented 96 masterpieces collected by the Habsburgs, with help from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria.

The 1659 portrait “Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress,” one of the best-known works by Spanish painter Diego Velazquez, opened the show, attracting some 320,000 visitors during the period.

Another huge success was a special exhibition that took place from June to October, bringing works from London’s National Gallery. “Boy Bitten by a Lizard” by Italian Baroque master Caravaggio was one of the 52 paintings on show. The exhibition drew around 360,000 visitors, marking the fourth-highest figure among all special exhibitions ever held so far, the museum said.

On top of the usual eye-catching shows, the museum has been looking for ways to engage with a younger audience, putting up installations on the site using the latest technologies so even children can virtually touch and feel what is on display.

“We will continue to work on making a museum where everyone feels comfortable,” Yoon Sung-yong, the museum’s director general, said Wednesday.

Currently, a special exhibition revisiting an era when Joseon kings pursued the ideal of impartiality is taking place, ahead of next year’s 300th anniversary marking King Yeongjo’s ascendance to the throne. Special exhibitions for next year have yet to be finalized, a museum official said.