The National Museum of Korea

My first weekend in Korea at the end of September had Hannah and I going to the National Museum of Korea. It's a gorgeous museum. There are three floors and it has very high ceilings. Everything is done in marble. It's not a museum like the Smithsonian that handles all science and history around the world. The National Museum just deals with Korea specifically and thus Hannah and I thought it would be a good intro into Korean culture. It certainly was.

The first floor dealt with Archaeology and History. It went from Paleolithic times with stone tools up to the early 1900s and the end of Korea's rule by a King. There were beautiful artifacts all over - most labeled in English as well as Korean. There were few informational panels that were written in English but English tours are available as well as MP3 tours you can rent (They were all out the day we visited). There were plenty of video rooms too that showed short movies that were well done in both Korean and English. Unfortunately, the Korean movies did not have English subtitles but all the movies were well done. My favorite artifacts on the first floor were the golden ones. They had some absolutely exquisite golden artifacts and jewelry from various archaeological investigations. Including a golden crown that was all intricate lacework. I have pictures of it in my Facebook page.

The second floor held a lot of furniture, calligraphy, and pottery from various times. It was almost more art gallery than anything else. I wasn't able to spend too much time going through this floor because I spent most of my time on the first and I didn't even make it to the third floor or tour the very extensive grounds around the museum. But, what I did see was beautiful and impressive and well warrants a return visit. A must see on my list of things people should go to when they visit Korea.