Over two days of the Seollal break — Feb. 16 and 18 — more than 86,000 people passed through the museum gates. An average of 43,232 visitors a day, nearly three times the facility’s recommended capacity, filled its galleries. It was 2.7 times higher than the turnout during the 2024 holiday. In January alone, more than 730,000 people visited. By mid-February, another 428,000 had followed. If the pace continues, annual attendance is expected to approach six million, close to last year’s record of 6.5 million — the highest since the museum’s founding in 1945.
Foreign visitors accounted for just 1.7 percent. This was, overwhelmingly, a domestic pilgrimage.
A museum official described the institution as becoming a “holiday cultural sanctuary.” The phrase is telling. What was once a quiet, weekday destination for students and scholars has become, on major holidays, a shared civic space — where leisure, memory and identity converge.
In this crowd lies a deeper shift.
For decades, Korea’s popular culture has traveled outward — through music, drama and fashion. Heritage, by contrast, remained largely inward-looking, confined to textbooks and special exhibitions. Today, the two currents are beginning to meet.
From Stage to Heritage: K-pop Enters Cultural Stewardship
That convergence is increasingly visible in the actions of artists such as RM, leader of BTS. K-pop is no longer content to borrow tradition as visual ornament. It is beginning to participate in the preservation of cultural substance itself.
In 2021 and 2022, RM donated a total of 200 million won to the Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation, supporting the restoration of a Joseon-era bridal robe, or hwarot, housed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Made of red silk and densely embroidered with phoenixes, peonies and longevity symbols, the robe represents one of the most fragile and rare categories of Korean artifacts.
The funds were used to stabilize deteriorating fabric and preserve its intricate embroidery. After conservation work by Korean specialists, the restored garment was exhibited in Korea in 2023 before returning to the United States.
It was a modest project in scale. Its implications were not.
Beyond Symbolism
The restoration demonstrated how the global influence of a pop artist can be channeled into institutional heritage work. The donation was administered within Korea’s formal conservation framework, linking private cultural capital with public preservation systems.
In the comment section of a K-Heritage Channel video documenting the project, one overseas fan wrote: “Thanks to BTS & Namjoon I have studied Korean history… The beauty of Korean culture & heritage is preserved & spread.” It was not a promotional slogan. It was a record of transmission — from entertainment to historical curiosity, from fandom to scholarship.
This is where the shift lies.
K-pop’s relationship with tradition has long been visual: hanbok-inspired costumes, palace backdrops, classical motifs. What is emerging now is structural. Artists are participating in the long, technical and often invisible work of conservation.
Heritage in Institutional Context
The hwarot project also illustrates a broader model. Cultural assets held overseas can be managed through cooperation between domestic specialists and international museums. Restoration is no longer an isolated act of recovery, but part of a transnational governance system for heritage.
RM’s role was catalytic, not performative. His resources enabled professionals to do their work. His name drew attention. The institutions carried the process.
That balance matters.
It suggests that popular culture, when embedded in formal frameworks, can reinforce — rather than dilute — the authority of heritage institutions.
The Present Momentum
This cultural expansion is unfolding alongside RM’s growing presence in the art world. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has announced “RM x SFMOMA,” scheduled for October 2026 to February 2027, featuring works from his personal collection alongside the museum’s holdings.
His collection spans Korean modern masters such as Yun Hyong-keun and Kim Whanki, and Western figures including Mark Rothko and Georgia O’Keeffe. The impulse is consistent: not to isolate traditions, but to place them in dialogue.
On stage, he is a global idol. Inside museum walls, he operates as a cultural intermediary.
Two spheres, once separate, are converging.
Cultural Stewardship
Back at the National Museum, as families drifted from the Silla gold crowns to the Joseon calligraphy halls, few were consciously tracing this connection. They were there for rest, curiosity, and a shared holiday experience.
Yet their presence is part of the same story.
K-pop once helped popularize hanbok as fashion. Today, it is helping sustain it as heritage.
The restoration of a single Joseon bridal robe may seem minor in a world of billion-view videos and stadium tours. But it signals a direction. Tradition is no longer a decorative remnant. It is being repositioned as a strategic asset and a shared public trust.
From packed museum halls to overseas conservation labs, Korea’s cultural ecosystem is widening.
Popular culture is no longer merely consuming history. It is learning, quietly, to take responsibility for it.
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