Lifestyle - The Korea Times

Should National Museum of Korea start charging admission again?

After the National Museum of Korea (NMK) reached a new milestone in 2025, welcoming more than 6.5 million visitors in a single year, a long-simmering question has resurfaced: Should the country’s flagship museum begin charging admission again? Currently, the museum’s permanent galleries are open free of charge. Until 2008, visitors paid a 2,000 won admission fee, but under the Lee Myung-bak administration, fees at the NMK and all other state-run museums nationwide were abolished as part of a broader push to expand the public’s access to culture. Nearly two decades on, that policy is once again under review. According to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the government is considering reintroducing admission fees as early as 2027, starting with the NMK. Under the proposal, adult tickets would likely cost around 5,000 won, with discounts offered to students and low-income groups. Opinion remains divided. At a ministry briefing last month, President Lee Jae Myung weighed in on the issue, stating that “when something is free, it can feel less precious, almost cheapened.”

Jan 12, 2026By Park Han-sol

Should National Museum of Korea start charging admission again?

After 6.5 mil. visitors, what's next for National Museum of Korea?

From 'Frozen' to K-musicals: What’s coming to Korean stages in 2026

Korea’s theater scene is set for another eventful year in 2026, from blockbuster imports to ambitious original works aiming for international success. Here’s a look at some of the key titles that are expected to shape the season. Global hits land in Seoul The year opens with CJ ENM bringing the stage adaptation of “Spirited Away” to Seoul, premiering Jan. 7 at the Seoul Arts Center. Based on Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film, the play follows Chihiro as she stumbles into a fantastical world of spirits and must find her way back. The show debuted in Tokyo in 2022, later traveling to London’s West End and Shanghai, and arrives in Korea as a touring production featuring Japanese performers. Two well-known actors share the title role: Mone Kamishiraishi, the Japan Academy Film Prize winner who originated the stage role, and Rina Kawaei, formerly of AKB48. The Seoul production runs through March 22. Another major international arrival is “Lempicka,” a new Broadway musical based on the life of the iconic Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka, at NOL Theater COEX Woori Bank Hall fro

Jan 8, 2026By Kwon Mee-yoo

From 'Frozen' to K-musicals: What’s coming to Korean stages in 2026

From Damien Hirst to Do Ho Suh, MMCA bets big on blockbuster shows

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) is launching a new annual blockbuster exhibition series, “Global Focus,” dedicated to contemporary heavyweights who have helped shape the international art scene of the 21st century. The announcement comes on the heels of a record-breaking year for the state-run museum, which welcomed an all-time high of 3.46 million visitors. Much of that surge was fueled by the runaway success of Australian sculptor Ron Mueck’s solo show, which alone drew more than 530,000 visitors. As part of the series, MMCA will spotlight Damien Hirst and Do Ho Suh in 2026. Hirst’s exhibition in March — his first large-scale solo presentation in Asia — is set to feature more than 50 pieces spanning his career, including his iconic works from “Natural History,” with its animals suspended in formaldehyde tanks, to “For the Love of God,” the platinum cast of a human skull bejeweled with thousands of diamonds, alongside some never-before-seen objects. As to why the public museum chose to focus on Hirst — a figure as influential as he

Jan 6, 2026By Park Han-sol

From Damien Hirst to Do Ho Suh, MMCA bets big on blockbuster shows

What lies ahead for Seoul's art scene in 2026

The year 2026 brings a crowded art calendar and a widened field of view. Across Seoul, museums are turning to Korean masters and internationally active contemporary artists, while new exhibitions examine queer art through the lens of the city’s own histories and neighborhoods. New institutions are also joining the scene, including Centre Pompidou Hanwha Seoul, while the major biennales — Venice, Gwangju and Busan — return to anchor the year. Korean masters in focus Major museums this year are dedicating solo exhibitions to established Korean artists, alongside contemporaries with strong international profiles. In September, as the city enters its annual peak art season with Frieze Seoul, Do Ho Suh and Koo Jeong-a will take center stage. A comprehensive survey of Suh’s practice will be mounted at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul. Long concerned with ideas of home, displacement and belonging, his work often takes the form of delicately constructed installations that replicate architectural spaces drawn from his personal history. Using translucent fabr

Jan 6, 2026By Park Han-sol

What lies ahead for Seoul's art scene in 2026

National Museum of Korea drew 6.5 mil. visitors in 2025

The National Museum of Korea welcomed more than 6.5 million visitors last year, its highest annual figure since opening 80 years ago. The museum said Friday that total visitors reached 6,507,483 in 2025, a 1.7-fold increase from 3.79 million recorded in 2024. It was the largest annual figure since the museum was established in 1945. According to the London-based The Art Newspaper, only two museums worldwide surpassed 6.5 million visitors in 2024: the Louvre, with 8.74 million, and the Vatican Museums, with 6.83 million. Including 13 affiliated museums nationwide, the National Museum of Korea recorded a combined total of 14,773,111 visitors last year. Museum Director You Hong-june said the record "reflects the public's expectations and interest for us to do even better." "In 2026, we will strive to meet the public's trust with exhibitions and services of even higher quality," he added.

Jan 2, 2026By Yonhap

National Museum of Korea drew 6.5 mil. visitors in 2025

More than Art Nouveau: Exhibition traces Alphonse Mucha’s two visions

Alphonse Mucha’s (1860-1939) world feels like a dream in perpetual bloom: maidens in draping robes linger in a golden glow, their coiling hair crowned with halos of flowers and looping vines. It’s the kind of sensual image where a single glance is enough to identify its maker. That instant recognizability propelled the Czech artist to stardom in 1894, when his poster for “Gismonda,” a play starring iconic stage actor Sarah Bernhardt, captured Paris’ attention. His romantic style, featuring what came to be known as the “Mucha woman,” soon spread far beyond the theater, reproduced across furniture, packaging and advertisements for high-end brands. But even as he became synonymous with Art Nouveau, Mucha altered the course of his career at the turn of the century, devoting the rest of his life to championing Czechoslovakia’s independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That shift culminated in “The Slav Epic,” a tour de force that took 18 years to complete. These two facets of the artist — the decorative and the devotional — come into sharp focus in “Alphonse Mu

Dec 28, 2025By Park Han-sol

More than Art Nouveau: Exhibition traces Alphonse Mucha’s two visions

National art museum draws record 3.3 mil. visitors this year

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) reported a record number of visitors this year driven by hit exhibitions, the museum said Wednesday. The MMCA said over 3.37 million people visited the national museum, a 15 percent increase from the previous year. The most popular exhibition was Australian artist Ron Mueck's solo show at the MMCA's Seoul branch. The exhibition, which ran from April 11 to July 13, attracted 533,035 visitors, averaging 5,671 daily. In addition, the MMCA's collection exhibitions at its Seoul and Gwacheon branches, tracing 100 years of Korean art history, have drawn over 650,000 cumulative visitors so far. By age, visitors in their 20s and 30s accounted for the largest share at 63.2 percent of the total. Within this age bracket, women made up 73 percent. Foreign visitors numbered 213,249, representing 6.3 percent of the total. Americans comprised the largest portion at 28.4 percent, followed by Europeans at 27 percent, Chinese at 17.8 percent and Japanese at 9.4 percent.

Dec 24, 2025By Yonhap

National art museum draws record 3.3 mil. visitors this year

Inside Taichung Green Museumbrary, where art and reading breathe together

TAICHUNG, Taiwan — “The architecture is full of insides and outsides. You’re constantly stepping out, then back in again,” said Korean artist Haegue Yang after walking through the newly opened Taichung Art Museum, part of Taichung Green Museumbrary in central Taiwan. Here, any attempt to draw a firm boundary between exterior and interior quickly loses meaning, a truth written into the buildings’ facades. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architecture firm SANAA, the complex comprises eight cubic structures of varying sizes, each wrapped in a veil of metal mesh that lets sunlight and breeze seep through. Once inside, visitors are invited to drift along winding pathways, staircases, ramps and skybridges, moving freely from one cube to the next. That blurring extends beyond form to the building’s very function. The complex is, quite boldly, both an art museum and a public library — a place where looking and reading are deliberately entwined. Taichung Green Museumbrary, built on a former military airfield-turned-park, is widely regarded as Taiwan’s most significant

Dec 18, 2025By Park Han-sol

Inside Taichung Green Museumbrary, where art and reading breathe together

InterviewHaegue Yang's floating tree takes root in Taiwan

TAICHUNG, Taiwan — Dangling in the soaring, light-bathed atrium of the new Taichung Art Museum is a 24-meter-tall “tree,” improbably hanging upside down. Trees, of course, are meant to root themselves in the earth. But in artist Haegue Yang’s vision, gravity is quietly overturned. The result is “Liquid Votive — Tree Shade Triad,” a floating form in which deep green venetian blinds become branches and leaves, while LED tubes coil around it like the straw garlands tied around divine trees in Korean shamanism. At night, laser lights flicker and dart across its surface like fireflies in the forest. Using industrial materials, Yang reimagines sacred trees, long revered as communal guardians across Asia — from Korea’s “dangsan namu” to Taiwan’s “dashugong.” “Liquid Votive” is her tallest installation to date, its scale unmistakable as the inverted tree never leaves visitors’ sight as they climb the building’s spiraling six-story ramp. The piece is part of the Taichung Art Museum’s inaugural site-specific commission, serving as its symbolic face for the nex

Dec 17, 2025By Park Han-sol

Haegue Yang's floating tree takes root in Taiwan

InterviewBelgian artist lets shadows tell the joke

What won Belgian artist and filmmaker Vincent Bal his 1.17 million Instagram followers? Shadows. More precisely, his whimsical illustrations are born from the quirky silhouettes cast by everyday objects. With just a few strokes of ink, he brings out the unexpected stories and characters tucked inside them. In his hands, hair shears become a suit-donning gentleman; a cheese slicer turns into a lightsaber wielded by Yoda; and dried chilis morph into a reveler dancing with arms flung skyward. In one drawing, even an ordinary pair of metal tongs gets its own comic twist, its shadow transformed into a taekwondo athlete shaking his ankle in pain after a brick-breaking attempt, accompanied by a Korean phrase that reads "It hurts a lot." While social media has long been Bal’s playground to share his inventive craft with tongue-in-cheek titles, the artist’s doodles stepped into the real world in 2022 with “The Art of Shadow,” his first-ever solo exhibition. The show drew more than 80,000 visitors as it traveled through Seoul, Daejeon and Busan. This month, Bal has returned to Museum 209 i

Dec 15, 2025By Park Han-sol

Arts & Theater