Government-General Museum of Chōsen

Building in Korea, Empire of Japan

37°34′43″N 126°58′42″E / 37.5785°N 126.9782°E / 37.5785; 126.9782Opened1 December 1915^[1]

The Government-General Museum of Chōsen (Japanese: 朝鮮総督府博物館, Korean: 조선총독부박물관) was a museum in Seoul during the period of Japanese rule. Built in the grounds of Gyeongbokgung Palace for the 1915 Chōsen Industrial Exhibition,^[2]^: 96 the museum opened on 1 December 1915.^[1] The museum did not operate as an independent agency, and the department under which it fell was subject to bureaucratic reorganization.^[3] The museum was disestablished in 1945 and its collections transferred to the National Museum of Korea,^[2]^: 106 which opened on 3 December 1945.^[1] In 1998, the museum building was demolished, after it had come to be viewed as a "symbol of colonialism".^[4]

Statistics

# visitors per year by ethnicity^[5]
Year	Korean	Japanese	Foreign	Total
1921				57,337
1922			1,800	64,420
1923				39,004
1925	27,483	21,182	996	49,061
1926	32,471	25,648	2,006	60,125
1927	15,280	28,129	1,307	44,716
1928	18,859	30,308	1,221	50,338
1929	16,349	28,935	1,355	46,639
1930	9,304	25,787	1,513	36,604

Publications

Bulletin of the Government-General Museum of Chōsen (朝鮮總督府博物館報), 1926–^[2]^: 105^[6]
Museum Exhibits Illustrated (博物館陳列品圖鑑), 1918–1943 (17 volumes)^[2]^: 105^[7]

Gallery

Postcard of the 1915 Chōsen Industrial Exhibition
The museum building in 1915

References

^ ^a ^b ^c "History: 1945~1954". National Museum of Korea. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Koo, Lina Shinhwa. "Structuring Hierarchies: Archaeological and Museum Projects of the Government-General of Korea and its Colonial Legacy" (PDF). The SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research. 14 (2020-21). SOAS: 90–112.
^ 문서소개 (in Korean). National Museum of Korea. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
^ "History: 1996~2004". National Museum of Korea. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
^ Shin 2018, p. 133.
^ 朝鮮總督府博物館報 [Bulletin of the Government-General Museum of Chosen] (in Japanese). National Institute of Informatics. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
^ 博物舘陳列品圖鑑 [Museum Exhibits Illustrated] (in Japanese). National Institute of Informatics. Retrieved 26 October 2023.

Sources

Shin, Michael (2018). Korean National Identity under Japanese Colonial Rule: Yi Gwangsu and the March First Movement of 1919 (1st ed.). Routledge. ISBN 9780367438654.