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Experiencing the Soul of Seoul — Inspirational Museums
as Symbols of a Rapidly Changing South Korea

By Junko Iwabuchi

Unexpected Invitation from the National Museumof Korea
One afternoon in mid-April this year, I noticed a message withKorean Hangul characters that looked rather suspicious in my e-mailinbox. I hesitated whether to open it and check, or delete it as trash,because normally I just delete everything when I see something
unfamiliar in a message from abroad. Then my assistant told me thatsomeone from the National Museum of Korea had tried to get intouch with me earlier by phone while I was out for a cup of coffee.
Convinced then that I seemed to have a legitimate reason to receive amessage from Korea, I opened the message and found it was aninvitation to speak as a guest lecturer at the National Museum ofKorea in Seoul on “International Museum Day”, which was set on
May 18 this year.
International Museum Day is designated by the International
Council of Museums (ICOM), a cultural organization under theauspices of UNESCO, to celebrate the purpose of museums insociety in our time. The objective of this day is to raise awarenessthat “Museums are an important means of cultural exchange,enrichment of cultures and development of mutual understanding,cooperation and peace among peoples.” The celebration seemed togo on for a whole week in many museums in Seoul, but ICOM Korea
was to sponsor a conference with speakers invited from all over theworld, with “Hyperconnected museums: New approaches, newpublics” as the topic set for this year. The invitation was sent by Dr.
Bae Kidong, the director general of the National Museum of Korea, inconjunction with ICOM Korea and the Korean Museum Association.
I was thrilled to accept this invitation and immediately sent amessage saying that I was more than happy to go to Seoul andspeak at the conference.
I actually felt relieved to find the name of Dr. Bae as I had fondmemories of him from one conference that I organized while I wastenured at Keio University in Tokyo nearly 10 years ago. He wasprofessor of archeology at Hanyang University in Seoul at that timeand I was very much involved in research in the area of so-called
digital humanities at Keio University, conducting collaborative
experiments in digital methodology with museums both locally andinternationally. I was slightly puzzled at first about what to say at theconference, but after we started talking about the theme of theconference I began to understand why Dr. Bae and the organizers
had thought of me as a speaker. After three days of exchanging
https://www.jef.or.jp/journal/

Photo: Naoko Shiraoka

Author Junko Iwabuchi

ideas, I made a proposal to give a presentation titled: “Planning a
Museum on Mars: Year 2050 — Imagine the World Beyond ReadyPlayer One”. I will talk about that presentation later, but first I wouldlike to describe the amazing new architecture, museums and young
academics working at cultural organizations in Seoul.

Beautiful Museums & Inspirational Young Koreans
Within a week or so, I received the itinerary for my visit to Seoul
and learned that the speakers were to take a tour of four different
museums as part of the organizers’ hospitality program on the day
before the conference. After a short flight from Haneda airport inTokyo, I arrived at Gimpo airport in Seoul on May 16 in the early
evening and was greeted by Yeakoo Lee, a youthful staffer workingfor ICOM Korea. She seemed very professional and extremely fluent
in English, but in the car that she was driving to take me to the hotel
she suddenly started speaking in Japanese to my surprise. It turned
out that she studied art in the United Kingdom, but had lived in Kyoto
for a few years when her husband was living there on a businessassignment. She was much younger, but we shared the sameinterest in food and culture in Kyoto and we kept a lively
conversation going until we finally arrived at my accommodation.
The organizers booked us into Novotel Suites, a stylish hotel in a
newly completed hotel complex in Dragon City, Yongsan-gu district.
The view from my room on a high floor was spectacular, but I could
tell that the immediate surrounding area is still under development.
Next morning, Ms. Lee came to pick us up at 9:30 a.m. with ayoung intern, Hyeji Kim, who turned out to be an aspiring novelist.
I met with my colleague from Osaka and we were both introduced to
the keynote speaker from Cleveland Museum, Jane Alexander, who isthe chief information officer of their digital program. We were alltaken into a van and the driver started our journey towards the firstmuseum on the itinerary, the National Museum of Modern andContemporary Art, Korea (MMCA). There are three branches of theMMCA and the facility we visited on this occasion is the newest one
opened in November 2013 in the north of Seoul and very close to thehistorical palace of Gyeongbokgung, the largest of the Five Grand
Palaces built by the Joseon dynasty. Part of the architectural frame of
the museum was borrowed from the former military hospital during
the Japanese occupation (1910-1945), but the superb renovationand new additions have created a beautiful atrium full of light. In theenormous three-story building, with one underground floor, there are
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Photo: Takushi Tani

Digital Archive, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea

Entrance to the Furniture Museum

seven exhibition galleries, an auditorium, library, digital library,shops and restaurants. They organize temporary exhibitions withvarious themes at this museum frequented by young people, butsince we were given only one hour to stroll around, we had to run
through large-scale installations of works by artists from all over theworld, including a few Japanese. Since this was “InternationalMuseum Week”, admission was free and we ran into a lot of young
people even though it was Thursday. We were able to tell alreadyhow seriously Koreans consider modern and contemporary art bywatching people reacting to the exhibitions.
After the MMCA, we were taken for a lunch of traditional Korean
food and then headed out to the Korea Furniture Museum in a hilly
area of luxurious homes that are only familiar in contemporary
K-drama. Several traditional aristocratic houses were relocated here
to create the museum and the collection contains close to 2,500
pieces of valuable wooden furniture. We were given a tour in English— otherwise it would be too difficult to figure out the stories behindeach item. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take photographs
inside this museum, but what surprised me most is that many of theitems of furniture for the wealthy class looked very minimalist andmodern.
Our next stop was the world famous Leeum, Samsung Museum ofArt. I was very much looking forward to visiting this museum
because Samsung is a well-known corporate sponsor of various
exhibitions. I noticed digital numbers buried in the floor, an iconic
piece by Japanese contemporary artist Tatsuo Miyajima, as wewalked towards the entrance, and then once inside we were greetedby another major piece by Japanese artist Kohei Nawa. This museum
consists of three large buildings. Building 1, designed by Swissarchitect Mario Botta, houses traditional Korean art; Building 2,designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, houses the collection ofcontemporary art; and the Samsung Child Education & Culture
Center is an annex designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. Eachbuilding is impressive as a piece of art by itself, but I wasoverwhelmed by the superb collection of historical porcelain in
Building 1. I had thought the Leeum, Samsung Museum was allcontemporary art, but the collection of traditional Korean art was
vast and truly impressive. The audio-visual museum guide wasbeautifully compiled on a smartphone-like device and quite usefultoo. There was an attractive museum shop and the inviting smell ofcoffee filled the lobby, but we had to run once again to go on to thenext museum.
The last stop on our itinerary was the Amorepacific Museum of Art(APMA), which is a corporate museum recently opened near
Sinyongsan Station by a cosmetics giant, Amorepacific. The
company’s headquarters were completed last year in November andthe museum celebrated its opening in May with a major retrospective
exhibition of works by Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael LozanoHemmer. It was an amazing large-scale installation of interactive
media art and I was impressed by the serious commitment of thesponsoring company. Then one of the young curators came up tospeak to me, and to my happy surprise I learned that she had been
one of my students in an art management course at Keio University
nearly 10 years ago. I was extremely exhausted after visiting four

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Exterior of the Leeum

museums in one day and ready to collapse by that time, but Eunho
Park was fluent both in English and Japanese, so I enjoyed theprivilege of speaking in Japanese with her for a while.
I was delighted to see a former student working as a young
professional in such a good museum environment, but at all themuseums I visited that day I had good conversations with young
professionals, particularly women, including our escorts, Ms. Leeand Ms. Kim from ICOM Korea. I couldn’t help wishing them well in
their future careers, since in Japan I understand that museum
positions are very limited and young people have been struggling tofind any position at all. It was such an insightful day of learning
about Korean museums and I felt happy and envious that they could
afford to hire a large number of young professionals.

Tatsuo Miyajima’s piece at the entrance to the Leeum
Photo: Author

A Museum on Mars in 2050
So the next day, I attended the conference “Hyperconnectedmuseums: New approaches, new publics” at the National Museum ofKorea and gave my presentation “Planning a Museum on Mars: Year2050”. What follows is an extract from it.
As crazy as it may sound, we are approaching an era in which weenvision Mars as some kind of an experimental lab far away fromhome, with aspiring scientists conducting research; and then, a few
decades from now, it will also become an attractive tourist
destination. In fact, many scientists are already talking about mannedflights to the Red Planet within 15 to 20 years from now, and maybe“Gravity stairs” by Olafur Eliasson at the LeeumJapan SPOTLIGHT • November / December 201851

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another 20 years after that there will be regularly scheduled
commercial flights for those men and women who are interested intaking a trip to Mars as a holiday destination. If so, it is difficult forme to imagine such a tourist destination, or even just a place forresearchers to live, without any kind of facilities for intellectual
entertainment, such as a museum.
About 10 years ago, with the introduction of equipment like podcasting devices and smartphones, combined with fast connections tothe Internet, we were awfully excited to see the capability ofmuseums growing bigger in providing more and more informationon their collections as part of the newer approach of out-reachprograms for visitors. This was way before the exchanges between
audiences through SNS and YouTube became so popular, but alreadymany curators and museum educators came to notice theimportance of communication with and among different groups. We
realized then that new technologies help promote what museums
have been always trying to achieve: to maximize the accessibility ofvisitors to the collections in an educational context.
During my tenure at Keio University in Tokyo, I tried designingvarious pod-casting programs and digital exhibitions online throughcollaborative experiments with museums. My mission at that time
was to cater to the betterment of life for individuals with restrictedmobility, for those in hospitals. I was particularly thinking of youngchildren who have problems with their immune system and are notallowed to have contact with the world outside hospitals, and elderly
people, or adults with the inability to drive or who are unable to takepublic transportation by themselves.
My idea at that time was to deliver museum content in a lively
form for those who cannot physically go to a museum. I wasdetermined to do something more than just putting up static imagesof museum buildings, galleries and collections on the web, or letting
people outside use the audio tour equipment without actually seeing
the objects. We had to find something to bridge these two. So
naturally, we came to the conclusion that we should design
something with video casting and developed a platform called the“VOLUMEONE”. The idea was pretty much like YouTube with thespecific use for museums and educational institutions that work incollaboration with hospitals and facilities for the elderly. But this wasbefore 2010 and these experimental services were quite costly toimplement, and we were only able to design a demo piece with a lotof technological restrictions.
But we are now living in 2018 and Internet speeds are much faster,and at most museums around the world, information on eachcollected object is already digitized with images and rich content. We
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Photo: Takushi Tani

Entrance to the APMAand holographic technology. We could soon invite our audience tocommunicate with SNS enhanced with these technologies as well.
There is a research facility in Utah called the Mars Desert Research
Station (MDRS) owned and operated by the Mars Society, which is aspace analog facility that supports Earth-based research in pursuit ofthe technology, operations, and science required for human spaceexploration.
My desire now is to start experimenting with the MDRS to explore
the possibility of recreating an existing museum in duplication byusing 3D printing, AI and holographic technologies because, even formuseums, space exploration is not something we should avoid
thinking about. We will be responsible for creating a decent museum
for children who grow up on Mars very soon.

Junko Iwabuchi is chief writer and partner at web media “Agrospacia” andadjunct professor at Aoyama Gakuin University. She is a former HelenaRubinstein Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, andparticipated in the Rotary Foundation scholarship program to study in Florence,Italy. She is a frequent contributor to newspapers and magazines in Japan onarts, culture, lifestyle and media.