How Korea's national museum turned ancient artifacts into costume-play sensation

For one day, Korea’s most revered artifacts are no longer kept behind museum glass.

Instead, they stride down runways, pose for selfies and perform choreography in front of crowds — as visitors dressed as golden Buddhist sculptures, smiling 57 B.C.-935 A.D. Silla roof tiles, Bronze Age bells and even a life-size map of the Korean Peninsula.

If Halloween is the annual occasion when people borrow the identities of fictional characters, the National Museum of Korea’s costume-play contest has become a distinctly Korean version: one day in September when participants become the cultural treasures they love most.

This year, “Dress Like a Museum” drew 275 teams and 643 participants — more than triple last year’s 83 entries — turning what began as a museum participation program two years ago into a fast-growing heritage fandom event.

Contestants are not only asked to imitate heritage but also to bring it to life through their own storytelling.

Echoing the contest’s poster slogan — “It is time to awaken the artifact sleeping inside you” — the event invites participants to discover a personal connection with heritage and give it a living form of their own.

Judges assess applicants’ motivation for selecting the heritage, ties to their region, their understanding and creative reinterpretation of the artifact, performance and potential for public outreach. The contest offers prizes and awards worth a combined 40 million won ($29,000).

The result is a new kind of heritage literacy: Museumgoers of all ages and backgrounds select their favorite object, study its details and bring it to life through makeup, handmade props and performances designed for both the runway and social media.

The appeal extends well beyond the contestants, drawing crowds of fellow visitors who gather to watch familiar artifacts into playful reinterpretation. Last year, about 6,000 visitors joined the on-site event after photographs of contestants transformed into artifacts went viral across social media.

Among the 263 participants is one participant, painted gold from head to toe, creating the museum’s iconic Pensive Bodhisattva, a figure seated with one leg resting across the other while immersed in deep thought.

Another team, meanwhile, turned a Bronze Age ritual bell into a two-person costume. Their bodies were painted dark bronze and joined by a large cloth structure, with their heads and hands, also painted in bronze, pushed through the openings.

An office-worker team reimagined the human-face roof tile from the Silla Kingdom, a circular gray tile once placed at the end of tiled roofs and engraved with a human smile. The three teammates painted themselves gray, lay among rows of black and smiled brightly with only their faces visible.

Some brought unmistakably contemporary fandom language to ancient objects.

“Bangtap Goryeo-dan,” a pun on K-pop superstar BTS’ Korean name, chose a Goryeo-era bronze offering pagoda. The team built a towering multitiered structure modeled after the Buddhist ritual object, positioned members in bronze armor around it and placed a figure in black at its center.

The museum’s contest takes K-pop fandom and cosplay culture’s participatory grammar, where fans select a favorite, study its details, make it their own and seek recognition from a community that understands the reference.

The craze is also closely tied to the museum’s broader transformation. With popular museum merchandise known as “MU:DS,” photogenic exhibition spaces and extended cultural programming, the museum has increasingly positioned itself as a lifestyle destination rather than a solemn institution reserved for school trips.

The 50 finalists will compete in regional rounds at national museums in Chuncheon, Gongju, Daegu and Jeonju during the weekends in September. The final round will take place at the National Museum of Korea’s open plaza in Seoul on Sept. 19.