The National Museum of Korea in Seoul's Yongsan-gu District on Dec. 13 attracted its four millionth visitor this year for the first time in its history. (Korea.net DB)

By Lee Kyoung Mi

The National Museum of Korea (NMK) has attracted an annual record-high four million visitors this year. 

The museum on Dec. 12 said the record was 13% more than its previous high of 3.53 million set in 2014. The cumulative figure also surpassed 54 million since the building's relocation to Seoul's Yongsan-gu District from Jongno-gu District.

Explaining the surge in visitors this year, the museum cited the success of recently opened exhibitions and rave reviews of renovated galleries for permanent exhibitions.

In June, 360,000 people saw the exhibition "Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London," which showed for the first time in Korea masterpieces from the National Gallery in the British capital. "Six Centuries of Beauty in the Habsburg Empire," which opened in October last year and ran through March this year, attracted 320,000 visitors, including 170,000 this year. 

"Masterpieces" ranked fourth and "Six Centuries" sixth among the museum's special exhibitions.

A media event on Nov. 11, 2021, opens the new gallery Room of Quiet Contemplation, which features the two famous gilt-bronze Buddhist statues "Pensive Bodhisattva." (Korea.net DB)

The museum said two places emerged as visitor favorites. The first is the Room of Quiet Contemplation, which has housed since 2021 the two well-known gilt-bronze Buddhist statues "Pensive Bodhisattva," and the second a gallery that was renovated late last year for beautiful jade Goryeo celadon.

Foreign tourists played a big part in the surge of visitors. Over 170,000 foreign sightseers came this year alone, up more than 30% from 130,000 in 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

"This shows rising foreign interest in our museums and traditional culture," a museum source said. "Videos filmed at the NMK like promotional clips for BTS and the Korea Tourism Organization went viral and attracted a lot of views, thus raising international recognition of the museum."

In a survey released in March by the London-based The Art Newspaper on the number of visitors to global museums last year, the NMK ranked fifth.

Opened in 1945, the NMK has six sections for permanent exhibitions divided by era and theme, a special exhibition hall and children's museum. The facility was relocated in 2005 to Yongsan-gu from inside Gyeongbokgung Palace in downtown Seoul.

Sam Nichols (second from left) on the morning of Dec. 13 receives a gift from National Museum of Korea Director General Yoon Sung-yong for being the fourth millionth visitor to the museum in Seoul's Yongsan-gu District. (National Museum of Korea)

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