Major Korean section unveiled in U.S. nat’l museum

Smithsonian’s natural history museum to represent Korea’s past

The Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History is soon to have a room dedicated to items from Korea, according to an announcement by the Washington, D.C. office of the Korea Foundation. The foundation said Tuesday that the special section will open on May 23 and include close to 3,000 artifacts of Korean porcelain and items relating to Korean customs, family culture, the Korean writing system, traditional dress, and geography.

According to the Korea Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution plans on celebrating the opening of the Korea section with a series of events from May 19 to June 18, including a hanbok fashion show, a performance by traditional musician Hwang Byungki, a folk performance of the traditional music-and-dance spectacle , a Korean food festival, and an instrumental performance of the . The Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History is the most popular of the Smithsonian Institution's 19 museums and receives close to seven million visitors a year.

The Smithsonian Institution currently has approximately 700 Korean relics, including, among many other things, clothing accessories and Goryeo (Koryo) period Buddhist paintings. Only a small portion of them, however, have been on display, most in the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. The Smithsonian’s new Korea section will join a number of increasingly better representation of Korean culture in prestigious American museums. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston's Peabody Essex Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art each have dedicated Korean sections.

The Korean section in the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History is being created in part through cooperation by the Korea Foundation and Korea's National Folk Museum, after president Roh Moo-hyu and first lady Kwon Yang-suk suggested the need for one while visiting Washington, D.C. in 2003.

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