Now it is your turn to go

Now, people come not only to view exhibitions but to buy merchandise from the gift store or to take photos to post on social media. The center of gravity has clearly shifted beyond passively viewing artifacts.

Kim Dong-ryul

The author is a professor at Sogang University.

A friend of my wife recently came to Seoul with her daughter. It was her first visit in decades. She currently lives in New York and used to avoid returning to Korea. In the turbulent 1980s, she had been a hard-line student activist, imprisoned repeatedly during the authoritarian era. Her father, a civil servant, ultimately lost his job because of her political activities.

Visitors crowd the National Museum of Korea in Yongsan District, central Seoul, on Dec. 11, 2025, after the museum surpassed six million visitors in a single year for the first time. [KIM KYUNG-ROK]

For many years, Korea was an object of anger and contempt for her. But she found herself boarding a plane at the insistence of her daughter, who had just entered university. Parents, after all, can rarely refuse their children. The daughter had one clear reason for coming: the National Museum of Korea, often called “Gukjungbak” in Korean shorthand by younger generations.

The daughter was deeply immersed in Korean pop culture. The reach of the Korean Wave among American college students has gone far beyond what many in Korea may assume. Curious and slightly skeptical about what there was to see, I decided to visit the museum myself. It had been about 20 years since my last visit.

The scene was striking. Cafes and other facilities were packed, and the atmosphere felt closer to a public plaza than a quiet exhibition hall. Museums are not places people visit frequently. Unless they are specialists, many Koreans reportedly go only once in their lifetime. Now, people come not only to view exhibitions but to buy merchandise from the gift store or to take photos to post on social media. The center of gravity has clearly shifted beyond passively viewing artifacts.

In the early 2000s, after returning from studying overseas, I brought my children, who were in elementary school at the time, to the National Museum of Korea. It was housed inside Gyeongbok Palace back then. My goal was simple: to introduce them to Korean culture. But the dimly lit galleries failed to hold their attention, and we left early after they repeatedly complained that they were bored. I still remember their words clearly.

The same museum has now reached critical mass. Becoming a world-class institution no longer feels like an unrealistic goal, but to achieve that, it must continue to evolve into a place that people visit for the experience and enjoyment — not merely to passively observe. In Europe and the United States, museums have increasingly become refined social spaces.

It may now be your turn to go. A meeting at a museum carries a certain quiet dignity, so even grabbing a cup of coffee there will do.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.