국립중앙박물관 ~ The National Central Museum

Recently I came into the knowledge that myself and a friend from my Korean language class have all day Thursday off until four o'clock. As part of our recent resolution to stop wasting that day sleeping in, Alexis and I spent last Thursday in the National Central Museum. Currently they are hosting the Louvre, but as we were more interested in Korea (and the Louvre exhibit cost extra dough) you will not see pictures of French paintings.

The Museum featured six wings, only three of which we had time to catch. One wing we skipped was the foreign donation wing, though that is the host to a famous Greek helmet, won by a Korean marathon runner in the early 19th century. We did get to see lots of history, including clothes, paintings, statues, ceramics, incense burners, jewelry, furniture, and those nifty folding screen divider things, all dating back to various of three major dynasties in Korean history over the mast few thousand years.

Thankfully, Alexis brought her Korean boyfriend. With his help we learned a lot about the history in the paintings, Buddhist statues and the meanings behind hand gestures, royalty, history of the language and calligraphy, and specific uses for some of the more strange looking artifacts. Thanks to MinCheol we learned much more than just the art can teach you.

The Buddhist statues were probably the coolest part of the Museum. They were displayed from as small as three inches high to as large as eight feet. Made of gold or stone, they were in various poses and from various dynasties. The change in style of depiction was evident as we passed through the exhibit. We learned the six most common Buddhist statue hand signals and their meanings. There was even a chart showing the variations between Japanese, Chinese, and Korean representations of Buddha.

The comical part of the museum (you didn't think I walked out of there without one cynical thing to say, did you?) were the "National Treasures." When I went South I thought it was kind of cool that every temple or monument I bought a ticket for was labeled with it's National Treasure number. Only after going to the Museum did I discover that Korea has over 1,400 so-called National Treasures. They just dole 'em out, man. Buildings and pots, statues and crowns...they even named to National Treasurdom (my favorite) this group of old women. Something about their genes? I couldn't understand. It's as if anything that was maintained half decent got to be a treasure, immensely devaluing the whole point of the thing. At least now the government can brag to Japan about how many treasures they have.