The National Museum of Korea has achieved a historic milestone by welcoming over 5 million visitors in a single year for the first time since its establishment 80 years ago. As of Wednesday, the Seoul-based institution recorded exactly 5,016,382 visitors, officially joining the exclusive ranks of the world's most visited museums alongside the Louvre in Paris, the Vatican Museums, the British Museum in London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The museum announced this groundbreaking achievement on Friday, marking a significant moment in its eight-decade history since its founding in 1945. According to official museum data, the institution experienced a remarkable 69.7 percent increase in visitors between January 1 and Wednesday compared to the same period last year, when approximately 2.9 million people visited the museum.
The visitor demographics reveal the strong domestic appeal of the museum, with 4.83 million Korean visitors making up the vast majority of attendees, while 185,705 international visitors also contributed to the record-breaking numbers. This surge in attendance reflects the growing appreciation for Korean cultural heritage both domestically and internationally.
Museum officials attribute this unprecedented growth to the rising global interest in Korean culture, a phenomenon that has been significantly amplified by recent popular media successes. The museum specifically cited the recent success of Netflix's animated film "K-pop Demon Hunters" as one factor that has further boosted international curiosity about Korean cultural institutions and heritage.
According to The Art Newspaper, a respected UK-based art publication, only four other museums worldwide achieved the 5-million visitor threshold last year: the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Vatican Museums in Rome, the British Museum in London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The National Museum of Korea now stands as the fifth institution globally to reach this prestigious milestone, representing a significant achievement for South Korean cultural tourism and international recognition of the country's rich historical heritage.
