The Children's Museum
Opened 2003
Beside the main building, a separate low building with its own entrance houses the Children's Museum, opened in 2003 and reorganised as a division of the museum in 2010. It exists because folk culture is easier to understand by doing than by reading. Instead of cases, the galleries are built as walk-through stories: a Korean folk tale becomes a landscape that children climb through, a traditional house becomes a place to try on clothes and lay out a meal, and a village festival becomes a set of drums and games. The exhibitions change every year or two, so each visit finds a new theme, but the approach stays the same.
Typical activities include folding a hanbok, playing yut and tuho, the stick-throwing and arrow-tossing games of the New Year, grinding grain in a hand mill, hanging a wish on a tree and listening to the tale of the tiger and the dried persimmon or the brothers Heungbu and Nolbu. Everything is at child height, labels are short and in Korean and English, and staff on the floor lead activities at set times. Look at the way the design borrows from real objects in the main museum; a child who has pounded rice cake here will recognise the mortar in the second hall next door.
The Children's Museum runs on timed sessions, usually of an hour or so, and places are limited, so families should book online in advance, especially at weekends and during school holidays. It is most rewarding for children between about four and ten. A small outdoor play area and the open-air exhibition next door make it easy to fill a morning. In a museum devoted to how Koreans have lived, this is the part that tries to make the next generation feel that the story is their own.
Did You Know? The Children's Museum rebuilds its galleries around a different folk tale or theme roughly every year, so no two visits a few years apart look the same.
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