Artifacts from Japanese colonial rule go on display at National Museum of Korea

Taegeukgi, the Korean national flag, bestowed by Emperor Gojong upon his American advisor Owen N. Denny, is displayed in the newly reopened Korean Empire gallery at the National Museum of Korea in Yongsan District, Seoul, Thursday. Yonhap

The National Museum of Korea will reopen its revamped permanent gallery devoted to the Korean Empire Friday, following a nine-month closure.

The gallery brings together 65 objects — including Emperor Gojong’s royal portrait, a state seal used for imperial edicts, textbooks and administrative documents — to examine the empire's efforts to defend its sovereignty and navigate a new global order amid expanding imperialism.

Returning to public display after seven years, Emperor Gojong's portrait anchors a gallery that illustrates the empire's attempt to rapidly embrace Western culture and modernize. This drive is documented through administrative and diplomatic records, textbooks, newspapers and magazines produced during the imperial period.

"While there is a perception that the Korean Empire was an empire in name only, there is also an opinion that the Korean Empire was precisely a determined drive toward modernity," Museum Director Yoo Hong-jun said during a Thursday press preview. "It was only frustrated because historical circumstances worked against it, but it was an attempt to modernize by having the imperial family embrace the wave of demands for reform that were rising among the people at the time."

A portrait of Emperor Gojong on display in the Korean Empire gallery at the National Museum of Korea / Newsis

The exhibition also confronts the Korean Empire’s downfall through artifacts associated with Japanese colonial rule. The museum is publicly displaying for the first time a silver plate buried beneath the foundation stone and a copper inscription marking the installation of the roof's main beam from the former Japanese Government-General building in Seoul, which was constructed over the demolished Heungnye Gate area of Gyeongbok Palace.

The Japanese buried the silver plate detailing construction records in 1920 and affixed the copper inscription containing the names of 53 colonial policymakers, senior officials and architects — including then-Governor General Saito Makoto and former Governor General Terauchi Masatake — to a column when erecting the central dome in 1923.

The two artifacts were discovered during the building’s demolition in 1996. While most structural elements were discarded and some pieces, such as the spire, were transferred to the Independence Hall of Korea, the museum retained three objects — the silver plate, the copper inscription and a central hall mural.

A silver foundation plate from the former Japanese Government-General building is displayed in the newly reopened Korean Empire gallery at the National Museum of Korea in Yongsan District, Seoul, Thursday. Yonhap

"Because the museum had not previously covered the period of Japanese colonial rule, there was no specific occasion to display them," museum curator Im Hye-kyung said. "We decided to exhibit them to recall the painful legacy of Japanese colonial rule by identifying the officials involved in devising and administering colonial policy."

Yoo said the museum plans to establish a long-term gallery dedicated to the period of Japanese colonial rule to trace how an emerging Korean national identity, formed during the empire, united through resistance to Japanese rule and led to today's Republic of Korea.

The so-called "blood bamboo," or hyeoljuk, which reportedly grew where senior official Min Young-hwan died by suicide. Korea Times file

As a sneak peek of the proposed gallery, the current exhibition features photographs and paintings of the so-called "blood bamboo," or hyeoljuk, which reportedly grew where senior official Min Young-hwan took his own life to protest the coerced 1905 Japan-Korea Protectorate Treaty, commonly known in Korea as the Eulsa Treaty, alongside a calligraphic work independence activist An Jung-geun produced while imprisoned in Lushun Prison.

"The museum’s historical narrative has a gap between the Joseon Dynasty and the Republic of Korea. We have avoided it because it is a painful period, but there must be a place to examine, reflect on and remember such history as well," Yoo said. "I want to show how the spirit of resistance embodied by early independence activists during the Korean Empire, such as Min Young-hwan, Ahn Jung-geun and Lee Jun, led to the March First Independence Movement."

Officials view the exhibition in the newly reopened Korean Empire gallery at the National Museum of Korea in Yongsan District, Seoul, Thursday. Yonhap

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.