Sejong City is drawing a blueprint to transform Sejong into a world-class museum city, using the relocation of the National Folk Museum as a stepping stone.
On the 27th, Sejong City announced that it will link the recently confirmed and announced plan by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to relocate the Folk Museum to Sejong with the existing Sejong Municipal Museum Complex project to develop Sejong into a premium cultural and tourism city.
The Folk Museum is one of Korea’s representative cultural facilities, attracting over 2 million visitors annually. However, since 2014, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has been promoting the relocation of the Folk Museum outside the palace area for purposes such as the restoration plan of Gyeongbokgung Palace and securing storage and exhibition space for collections. As a result, on the 24th, the Ministry finalized and announced the plan to relocate the Folk Museum to Sejong City by 2030.
In line with this, Sejong City plans to actively proceed with the regional relocation of the Folk Museum by negotiating the total project cost with the Ministry of Economy and Finance this year and starting the basic design next year.
The Folk Museum is expected to be built on a site of 40,000 to 50,000 square meters within the second phase of the Sejong Municipal Museum Complex site (total 115,000㎡).
The museum complex where the Folk Museum will be located is being developed in two phases in Sejong-dong (S-1 Living Zone) by 2027. The core goal is to establish five museums and two integrated facilities by the target year.
In the first phase, the National Archives Museum, Children’s Museum, Digital Cultural Heritage Center, Urban Architecture Museum, and Design Museum will be sequentially established, followed by the integrated storage facility and integrated operation center in the second phase.
The site for the Folk Museum is adjacent to the first phase of the museum complex. Based on this, the city plans to develop Sejong into the largest cultural and tourism city in Korea by linking the relocation of the Folk Museum with the establishment of five museums including the National Archives Museum.
Sejong City anticipates that the establishment of the largest museum complex in the country in this area will strengthen the local tourism infrastructure. To this end, the city will also focus administrative efforts on integrating cultural content with the expanded tourism infrastructure alongside the museum complex.
Once the Folk Museum relocates to Sejong City, it is expected that 3.6 million visitors will visit the museum complex annually. Sejong City plans a strategy to foster the tourism industry by attracting these visitors to local attractions such as the National Sejong Arboretum, Presidential Archives, National Sejong Library, Sejong Arts Center, and the Bidangang Golden Project.
Ryu Je-il, Director of the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau of Sejong City, said, “By additionally attracting national and private museums, art galleries, memorial halls, and other cultural facilities to the museum complex, we will grow our city into a world-class premium cultural and tourism destination comparable to the museum district in Washington D.C., USA.”
Director Ryu added, “With six museums, including the Folk Museum, opening sequentially and the activation of cultural and tourism programs utilizing existing cultural tourism resources, we expect the number of visitors to Sejong City to exceed 5 million annually. To achieve this, we will work closely with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to successfully complete the relocation of the Folk Museum.”
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