National Museum of Korea Releases "Cultural Heritage Digital Asset Guidelines"
Free Access to Cultural Heritage Digital Data on Official Website
3D Data to Be Released After September
The National Museum of Korea announced on July 9 that it has released the "Cultural Heritage Digital Asset Standard Guidelines 2024" to connect the museum's cultural resources with AI. Cultural heritage digital assets refer to data packages that can be applied to virtual, augmented, and mixed reality content on smartphones, web, and PCs.
Since 2015, the National Museum of Korea has systematically managed digital data of cultural heritage and enhanced compatibility with international standards by building high-precision data for approximately 52,000 major artifacts. Currently, it has made more than 200,000 digital data items available to the public through the e-Museum. Since 2017, the museum has produced about 390 3D data sets (including 61 National Treasures and 128 Treasures), of which 134 are freely accessible to anyone via its website. Since 2022, the museum has been establishing standard guidelines that encompass the entire lifecycle of cultural resources, including acquisition, management, and utilization of digital assets.
Currently, cultural resource data is widely used in immersive content, the metaverse, and exhibitions for sensory activities. For example, the 27-meter-high, ultra-large 8K media tower at Incheon International Airport exhibited the immersive content "National Treasure Bent-Back Buddha Statue," which received positive reviews. It won the Public Branding category at the 2023 iF Design Award. The metaverse "Healing Garden," built on ZEPETO in 2021, was created using a lightweight version of the same high-quality Bent-Back Buddha Statue data and has attracted steady interest, with approximately 29.7 million visitors to date.
Since 2020, the National Museum of Korea has been collaborating with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute of Korea to standardize cultural heritage digital data through asset creation, platform development, and the development of AI models specialized for cultural resources. The digital assets and 3D viewer will be further advanced and are scheduled to be released on the National Museum of Korea's website after September 2025. Users will be able to freely view 3D data of major artifacts without any additional programs.
In addition, the achievements of research and development, such as AI-based search technology and intelligent curation platforms, will be unveiled for the first time at the "2025 Museum and Art Museum Expo," which will be held from September 4 to 7.
A representative from the National Museum of Korea stated, "The National Museum of Korea is a core producer of data on cultural, artistic, historical, and traditional resources, leading international standards and spearheading the transition to a digital cultural resource powerhouse in the AI era. The 'Digital Asset Guidelines 2025,' scheduled for release in December, aim to design a data structure optimized for the AI environment, signaling an evolution from simply usable data to 'data that users can participate in.'"
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