The National Folk Museum’s Forecourt: An Afternoon Between a House That Was Moved and a Street That Was Rebuilt

Through the Samcheong-ro gate — a free museum, a ticketed palace

The National Folk Museum of Korea (main museum, Seoul) needs no advance booking. Hours are 09:00–18:00 from March to October and 09:00–17:00 from November to February, with last entry one hour before closing; from March to October it stays open until 20:00 every Wednesday. On weekends and public holidays, entry to the inside of the outdoor exhibition area is restricted for safety reasons; on weekdays it is open. Closed on 1 January, Seollal day, Chuseok day (25 September 2026) and announced temporary closure days. Enquiries +82-2-3704-3114.

No booking needed. Admission to the museum is free, the guide says, and visiting Gyeongbokgung is charged separately. The museum’s Sejong relocation page describes its present site as “a corner of Gyeongbokgung,” where it has been since 1993; the door and the price are different from the palace’s. Maya puts that difference at the top of the page. Find it on a map

She notes the hours too: 09:00 to 18:00 from March to October, last entry an hour before closing, and open until 20:00 on Wednesdays. And one more line: on weekends and public holidays, entry to the inside of the outdoor exhibition area is restricted for safety reasons; on weekdays it is open. Today is a weekday.

Past the gate, Maya doesn’t head straight into the main building. Today’s place isn’t indoors; it is the outdoor exhibition in the forecourt.

A rebuilt street — 70·80 Memory Street

The National Folk Museum of Korea describes its outdoor “70·80 Memory Street” as a recreation of a Seoul neighbourhood alley from the 1970s and 1980s. It runs past a corner shop, a stationery shop and a comic-book rental shop in front of a “national school” and on to a public bath, with Bukchon National School (“national school” was the name for primary schools until 1 March 1996), a stationer, a grocery, a comic shop, a snack bar, a barbershop and a mill. The barbershop holds the barber’s chair and tools once used at Hwagae Barbershop, which stood in Jongno.

Here is the alley from her saved pictures: past a corner shop, a stationery shop and a comic-book rental shop in front of a school, all the way to a public bath. The museum describes it as a recreation of a Seoul neighbourhood alley from the 1970s and 1980s. Maya writes the street in the first column, “rebuilt.” Find it on a map

The school is called Bukchon National School. “National school,” the guide explains, was the name for primary schools until it changed on 1 March 1996 — a name that disappeared before Maya was born. On her screen, the sign had just looked like old lettering.

But even inside this alley there is something that belongs near the second column. The barbershop’s description says it holds the barber’s chair and tools once used at Hwagae Barbershop, which stood in Jongno. The street was rebuilt; the chair and tools were actually used at Hwagae Barbershop in Jongno. Maya notes them beside the second column with a small asterisk: the guide itself does not say “moved.”

Between the two columns Maya draws a small arrow. “A chair used in a Jongno barbershop, inside a rebuilt street.*” None of her saved pictures showed the barbershop.

Life-size, exactly the same — guardian posts, a stone cairn and a water gauge

According to the National Folk Museum of Korea’s outdoor exhibition guide, the stone guardian posts (jangseung) on Jangseung Hill were chosen as the most characteristic of each region and remade life-size, exactly as they are; the stone cairn recreates the one at Mati village in Dongi-myeon, Okcheon, North Chungcheong. The water gauge (supyo) in the forecourt is a replica of the one remade in the reign of King Yeongjo and set up in front of Supyogyo Bridge on the Cheonggyecheon, which has been kept at the King Sejong Memorial Hall since 1973.

After Memory Street, Maya goes to Jangseung Hill. According to the guide, these stone guardian posts were chosen as the most characteristic of each region of Korea and remade life-size, exactly as they are. The stone cairn beside them recreates one from a village in Okcheon, North Chungcheong. Both go in the first column. Find it on a map

Maya stays on the words “made exactly the same” for a while. Life-size, the same shape — but this isn’t where they stood. Jangseung, the guide says, stood at the entrance to a village and guarded it. Here they stand together in a museum forecourt instead.

The forecourt also has a supyo, a stone gauge once used to measure the water level against drought and flood. The guide says the one remade under King Yeongjo and set in front of Supyogyo Bridge on the Cheonggyecheon has been kept at the King Sejong Memorial Hall since 1973 — and that this is a replica of it. The original was a stone gauge that once stood by Supyogyo Bridge on the Cheonggyecheon. In the corner of her notebook Maya writes: “next: Cheonggyecheon.”

A house that was moved — Ochondaek, 1848

According to the National Folk Museum of Korea’s outdoor exhibition guide, Ochondaek is a house that stood in Wongu 1-ri, Yeonghae-myeon, Yeongdeok County, North Gyeongsang, donated by the Nango branch of the Yeongyang Nam clan in 2010 and moved here; a ridge-beam inscription found during dismantling confirmed it was built in 1848. It is a ㅁ-shaped house around a central yard, with the women’s and men’s quarters joined together. The Filial Piety Pavilion (Hyojagak) commemorates a royal honour for filial devotion given to Heo Gwon (1847–1895); it stood inside his descendants’ home until flood damage in 2005 and other difficulties in preserving it led to its move here in 2008.

The second column finally fills up in front of Ochondaek. According to the guide, it was a house in Yeonghae-myeon, Yeongdeok County, North Gyeongsang, donated in 2010 and moved here. A ridge-beam inscription found when it was taken apart confirmed that it was built in 1848. Find it on a map

It is a ㅁ-shaped house around a central yard, the guide says, with the women’s and men’s quarters joined together, jars for sauces in the back yard, and a foot-mill, a well and an outhouse in the yard to the right. Maya doesn’t write down how the house got from Yeongdeok to here — the guide doesn’t say. She writes only two years: 1848 and 2010.

The forecourt also has the Filial Piety Pavilion, Hyojagak — a stele pavilion and gate commemorating a royal honour for filial devotion given to a man named Heo Gwon. It stood inside his descendants’ home until flood damage in 2005 and other difficulties in preserving it brought it here in 2008, the guide says; the wall only marks where the enclosure was. That one goes in the second column too.

The two columns have ended up almost the same length. A rebuilt street, guardian posts and a water gauge; a moved house and pavilion; and a chair once used in a Jongno barbershop. The “retro street” pictures on her phone weren’t wrong. They just didn’t carry the line saying the street was a recreation. What Maya read today was everything outside the photos.

Last, she reads the museum’s own history. Opened in 1946 in Yejang-dong, it moved through Sujeongjeon in Gyeongbokgung and the former National Museum of Modern Art building before arriving in its current building in 1993 — and it is now pursuing a move to a new building in Sejong City. At the bottom of the second column Maya writes the museum’s name. She adds one quiet recommendation: in the forecourt, read the outdoor-exhibition descriptions before taking pictures, and go on a weekday.

(※ This article includes staged images created with AI.)