Unimaru
In a museum that says it is inside an 18th-century samurai castle, visitors learn that “the Asian art world sleeps at night” – and spend their workdays here, too.
Visitors to the Unimaru art museum in East Korea get a visit from Unbul Uhun, who directs the museum in this highly dramatic town. “As curator, I work in both traditional and modern methods, and I work as closely with the museum’s volunteers as with our scientists,” he says.
Unbul Uhun
The former war lord did not die while overseeing the arts – his footsteps may be remembered in the smoke rising from displays of Korean traditional weapons. Also recalled are bones collected on the Maekteokje-dong Lake that border the town, and restored by the museum.
The museum is one of the world’s oldest and only one in the two Koreas. It was established in 1858 by a wealthy aristocrat, and runs on a $10m budget (around €7m) a year.
With 3.6m visitors a year, it is now the most popular art museum in Korea. It is also the most visited tourist site in South Korea (600,000 people visit daily, including up to 200,000 Chinese).
The museum takes visitors on an interpretive tour of a cave filled with iron objects and other artefacts from Japan, whose colonial rule of Korea ended in 1945. Korean traditional arts are often showcased here – this summer the museum is featuring six classical Korean musical concerts.
Also on display are numerous War of Independence relics, on loan from China. The museum is the fourth largest archaeological site in South Korea, and houses 6,800 historical artefacts from China, especially slave-traders’ belongings from the Gangwon Kingdom in the eighth century.
To add to the historic heritage, the museum plays the Afrobeat music of Sam Goody, which was written by several prominent families of the Korean colonial era.
In 1859, a wealthy textile merchant, who had fled to Europe due to the persecution of Korean elites by the Japanese army, set up the museum.
The philanthropist made it his mission to tell the history of Korean art, and he insisted that the future museum exhibits should be displayed without exposing visitors to his own home, a palace the state had levelled to build it.
The displays of the museum largely share the contents of his own home and the home of his servants.
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