
The National Hangeul Museum will move its holdings to the nearby National Museum of Korea by March in a precautionary measure prompted by a fire Saturday, which officials say did not damage any artifacts inside.
“The plan to move 89,000 objects is still being mapped out,” a senior museum official said Sunday, noting internal discussions are ongoing and it has yet to officially reach out to the NMK about the temporary move, which could take about a month.
Fire officials will inspect the building Tuesday to determine the cause of the fire that started Saturday morning on the museum’s third floor and burned the third floor and rooftop. It took firefighters some seven hours to completely extinguish the fire.
Artifacts at the museum were not damaged as the museum’s holdings had been locked in its storage facility on the first floor since the year-long renovation of the museum began last October, according to the museum.
The fire was first reported at 8:40 a.m. and by 12:31 a.m. some 262 firefighters had been dispatched to the scene. At around 10 a.m., museum officials preemptively moved 257 objects of higher value, including nine state-recognized Treasures, to the National Museum of Korea -- a neighboring museum about a five-minute walk away.
The fire was put out completely by the afternoon, with one firefighter sustaining minor injuries.
“Some of our people went into the storage facility with firefighters to take out priority items before fire-retardant sprays were activated, after which we would not be able to enter the facility as the spray removes oxygen from the air,” a museum official said.
The rest of the items at the storage facility, close to 89,000 total, will be moved once the NMK will start receiving them once the two state-run institutions agree on relocation plans, the official noted.
Culture Minister Yu In-chon, who led efforts to launch the National Hangeul Museum in 2014, visited the site Saturday and vowed to step up monitoring for safety at state-run museums.
“We will be more vigilant going forward,” he said.
According to the museum, it will run a safety survey to see if the four-story Hangeul Museum needs any immediate repairs to the building before resuming renovation work.
The safety survey will follow Tuesday’s inspection by the National Fire Agency. The results will be announced a month later. “This means our renovation schedule might change,” the official said of the one-year renovation plan.
The National Hangeul Museum, opened in 2014, will have more room for exhibitions and interactive features once the renovation is completed.
The renovated first, second and third floors will be dedicated to exhibitions, and the rooftop will turn into office space, according to the museum.
”We’re thinking about adding more on-site programs where visitors can closely see artifacts with curators constantly engaging them,” said one museum official with knowledge of the matter.
The museum is expected to launch touring exhibitions this year while the renovation is underway.
“Hangeul Experiment Project: Reinterpreting Hangeul in the Modern Era” will kick off in April in Gimpo and travel to Busan in September. The exhibition will look at the artistic as well as commercial adaptations of the Korean writing system, presenting videos, graphics and other content that highlight the unique shapes of Hangeul’s 28 letters. The project was launched in 2016.
The “On Dialects” exhibition will start in July in Gangneung, Gangwon Province, showing collections of literary works and documents that explore efforts to preserve different ways of speaking Korean. It will travel to Jeju Island in September and run through the end of the year.
“Children in a Happy World of Their Own,” an exhibition dedicated to children, will open in March in Gongju, South Chungcheong Province, before moving to Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province, where it will run from May to July.