Korean Film Archive (KOFA)’s Korean Film Museum is raised to the status of a film specialized national museum.

 

Korean Film Museum was registered as the first class specialty national museum on September 15th, while it was run as an attached facility of KOFA (Director LEE Byung-hoon).

 

An official of KOFA said that “This registration of Korean Film Museum to national museum will be an institutional foothold as the representative film museum and raise status of Korean cinema.”

 

The first class national museum is required more than one hundred museum materials, one curator and one hundred square meter of exhibition facilities. After fulfillment of the necessary conditions, Korean Film Museum applied for national museum to the Museum Policy Division of the Ministry of Culture and Sports last August, and finished registration of the first class speciality – film of national museum through thirty days of examination on September 15th. Currently national museums which joined the Korean Museum Association are 26 nationwide, and only Korean Film Museum is related with movie among them.

 

The Korean Film Museum opened in May 2008, and the number of visitors is increasing every year, while a hundred thousand of spectators visited in last year alone. It has been well received from movie fans to set up special exhibitions a couple of times annually and various media educational programs for students as well as permanent exhibitions that show one hundred years of Korean cinema history.

 

This registration is significant because it increases public awareness of preservation cinema inheritance and upgrades status of Korean cinema as the first movie specialty national museum in the country.

 

Besides, Korean Film Museum can provide public services thanks to training curatorial professional resources, contribution system and various interactions with other national museums. “Korean Film Museum’s exhibits will be managed more systematically to register to the National Relics Management System,” KOFA forecasted.

 

Korean Film Museum is planing to collect exhibits related to Korean movies so that make meaningful materials and variety of professional exhibition programs. Thus it designs to total improvement of exhibition facilities and contents as a first step, it is to be turned into more pleasant and attractive museum by completion of its remodeling in December.