National Museum of Korea – Photo Gallery – Experience

When it comes to traveling, the activity that I love most in between the massive consumption of food is to roam museums, the reason why I love Museums so much is because not only are you able to see specific things at those museums; the way that the museum index and curates the items on show tells a lot about the culture in the country and how developed it is. The National Museum of Korea is the flagship museum in Seoul, and the closest station is Ichon station (although we caught a cab because it was bucketing down).

Apart from the fact that the Museum houses a huge array of history items across different cultures, the building itself is impressive – weather was not great when we visited so there was a relatively large line (moved very efficiently though)

The Museum itself is split into 2 areas, there’s the permanent exhibit which is to the left as you approach the building and then there’s the special exhibit which was showing an Egyptian show this time.

The main exhibit is more of a journey through the history of Asia, with a large part of the exhibit dedicated to a sunken trade ship where you can see a lot ceramics and coins that hints of how culture was spread.

Another part of the permanent exhibit was dedicated more to Buddhism and was incredibly interesting, including one of the key pieces being the Pensive Buddha.

Because of my crazy stamina – I manage to walk for so long exploring that Ms. Buddha started to complain about being hungry (which is very rare for Ms. Buddha – although to be fair – I’ve managed to force her to walk about 4 hrs non-stop by then. We found ourselves a spot at the Museum café and I ordered a soup (because I wanted to leave more room for dinner) – tasted quite nice) and Ms. Buddha went for a more filling pasta (she said it was adequate).

With bellies filled, we moved onto the special exhibit, which went through the Egyptian culture, especially on the mummification process and how not only would the kings treat mummification as a necessity, but the not to wealthy will also use colour to imitate gold in their coffins.

All in all, the National Museum of Korea is impressive in the sense that it reveals a lot about Seoul and South Korea on how far they have come. Definitely worth a visit if you haven’t been. When we left, there was also the ice which was stunning.