Thousands gather to cheer cultural heritage turned performance at music-filled outdoor spectacle
A giant golden royal seal swayed down a red carpet to pounding music, along with two women — one dressed in a Western-style uniform from the Great Korean Empire period, the other in a green Joseon era official’s robe and sunglasses.
“Where did the state seal go?” they called out as thousands of spectators cheered at the National Museum of Korea’s open plaza in Seoul on Saturday afternoon.
The seal, handcrafted from a barbecue restaurant exhaust hood and a large box spray-painted gold, represented “Jegojibo,” the royal seal used for imperial decrees. Looted and taken to Japan in 1911 during the colonial occupation, the seal returned home decades after Korea’s liberation.
Their entrance set the tone for the final round of “Dress Like a Museum Exhibit,” the National Museum of Korea’s increasingly popular artifact cosplay contest.
What began in 2024 as a small program has grown into a nationwide heritage fan event, drawing 275 teams and 643 participants this year — more than three times last year’s 83 entries.
More than 2,000 people registered in advance to attend. The seats at the venue filled early, while additional visitors stopped on their way to the galleries and gathered by railings to watch. With unregistered onlookers included, the crowd swelled to an estimated 3,000 people.
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At Saturday’s final, 25 teams transformed the open plaza into something between a red carpet awards show, a cosplay convention and an outdoor concert. The contestants came as Buddhist statues, royal seals, bronze bells, ancient pottery and Joseon-era stationery, each accompanied by handmade props. Finalists performed short routines to show off their costumes with the original artifact’s image displayed on the stage.
For many participants, the contest was not simply about reproducing the outward form of an object.
Two women in their 20s, who called their team “Breathing Turtles,” appeared in sunglasses and gold costumes, inspired by a turtle-shaped royal seal created when King Danjong was posthumously restored to the throne during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910).
Preparing for graduate school and career changes, the duo said they had chosen the turtles because they often worried they were moving more slowly than others.
“But we learned that the seal was created about 200 years after King Danjong’s death,” one contestant said. “It showed us that even if something takes a long time, sincerity can eventually be recognized. We will walk our own path at our own pace.”
A teenage boy, persuaded by his mother with the promise of pocket money, covered himself in gold paint and fabric to become a standing Buddha. He said the mole on his forehead, once aining feature
“Through an artifact of the past, I was able to live in the present and gain strength to move toward the future,” he said.
The youngest finalists, 10-year-old twins Park Seo-on and Da-on, dressed as a pair of earthenware vessels shaped like horses and their riders. The pair said they chose it after seeing the artifacts at the museum and deciding the two figures riding side by side looked “just like us.”
Former basketball player and fashion model Lee Hye-jung turned a Bronze Age polished stone dagger into a runway performance, holding her arms overhead and walking sideways in tiny steps. The museum had once felt distant to her, she said, but dressing as an artifact made it feel more familiar.
Others gave their performances a contemporary spin. Webtoon artist Lee Dae-yang, painted gold from head to toe as the museum’s iconic Pensive Bodhisattva, rapped to a hip-hop beat, gesturing toward the audience like a concert performer.
The top prize went to Jeon Eun-seul, 22, for her recreation of a white porcelain carp-shaped water dropper, a late-Joseon period artifact.
A water dropper is a stationery object used to pour water onto an inkstone. Jeon, in a blue-and-white costume, lay on the ground and flopped her body like a carp leaping through water, drawing loud applause from the crowd.
“I am a job seeker who does not know what I am good at yet, but this award gave me a lot of courage,” she said.
Museum director Yoo Hong-jun, dressed in a deep blue traditional robe and hat, described the finalists as artifacts stepping out of their display cases and into the present.
“This event has become a festival unlike any other, where participants can exercise their creativity and imagination,” he said. The museum will make next year’s edition bigger, he added.
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