national museum-attendance

▲ Visitors line up to enter the National Museum of Korea in Seoul on Oct. 8, 2025, the sixth day of the extended Chuseok holiday. (Yonhap)

▲ Visitors line up to enter the National Museum of Korea in Seoul on Oct. 8, 2025, the sixth day of the extended Chuseok holiday. (Yonhap)

national museum-attendance

National Museum tops 5 mln annual visitors, a first in 80 years

SEOUL, Oct. 17 (Yonhap) -- The National Museum of Korea said Friday that its annual attendance surpassed 5 million for the first time in its 80-year history.

The museum recorded 5,016,382 visitors from Jan. 1 through Wednesday, up 69.7 percent from about 2.96 million during the same period last year, according to the museum.

Of the total, 4.83 million were South Koreans and 185,705 were foreign nationals.

It marks the first time since the museum's founding in 1945 that its annual attendance exceeded 5 million.

The surge comes amid rising global interest in Korean culture, boosted in part by the success of the Netflix animated film "KPop Demon Hunters."

Last year, only four museums worldwide attracted more than 5 million visitors, according to The Art Newspaper, a British art publication. The Louvre in Paris led the list with 8.74 million visitors, followed by the Vatican Museums (6.83 million), the British Museum (6.48 million) and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (5.73 million). London's Tate Modern ranked fifth with 4.6 million visitors.

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