Museum IT departments have traditionally served as support functions to manage security and systems. But the National Museum of Korea goes further, identifying and pursuing AI initiatives to preserve cultural heritage, broaden its use, and improve the visitor experience.
The National Museum of Korea uses technology to expand the possibilities to preserve and display physical artifacts, and its digital museum division (DMD) plans and oversees that transformation. A dedicated team responsible for digital strategy and content took shape in 2019, and in 2020, the museum informatics division adopted its current name.
“The director at the time placed great importance on investing in technology and felt we needed a department that could bring a strategic direction to work that had been carried out separately,” says Choi Seungae, former DMD head. “The digital museum division was created as a way to prepare for the next generation.”
A cultural transformation
In just over five years, the DMD has delivered a range of services, including AI guide robots, smart kiosks, and multilingual and sign language services. It’s also developed immersive experiences that use large-scale imagery and sound to recreate cultural heritage.
More recently, its focus has shifted toward data. The aim is to move beyond storage and preservation, making data previously confined to the museum available for wider use. Physical artifacts face restrictions on movement and display because of security concerns and risk of damage. Digital data can help overcome those limitations.
One example is an immersive content project featuring the Denny Taegeukgi, Korea’s oldest surviving national flag, undertaken last year to mark the 80th anniversary of Korea’s liberation.
The project displayed images of the 130-year-old flag once held by Owen Denny, a diplomatic adviser during the late Joseon period, on a large outdoor media screen in front of a department store in central Seoul.
At first glance, the project might appear to have involved little more than photographing an artifact and displaying it. But it required highly detailed data since enlarging existing photographs would’ve produced visible pixelation on such a large display.
Therefore, the division created a new, ultra-high-res dataset containing 10.8 billion pixels at a two-meter scale from the original flag, which measures approximately one meter. Precision scanning captured even the fine texture of both sides of the fabric.
Plan of action
Earlier this year, the museum was selected for the government-led K-Science initiative, through which it plans to pursue data projects beginning in 2027. The cross-ministerial R&D program combines Korea’s historical, cultural, and environmental assets with advanced science and technology to create economic, social, and cultural value.
Through the initiative, the museum will digitize over 2.5 million artifacts and develop technologies to expand the commercial potential of Korean cultural assets. The central goal is to connect the entire process, from archaeological exploration and preservation, to digitization and content development.
The resulting technologies are expected to help overcome technical limitations in detailed surveys of ancient tombs, for example. In preservation and collection management, AI could also automatically control temperature, humidity, and lighting in museum storage facilities.
Never a single right answer
Data presents challenges across both private and public sectors. For museums, however, they’re particularly complex because artifact data contains layers of interpretation, facts, and history.
Consider an AI system designed to answer questions about a particular artifact. It needs data to support its responses. But what should it say if records from Baekje and Silla, two ancient Korean kingdoms, offer conflicting accounts of the same event. Ideally, it would adequately represent different perspectives, but that’s not always possible since the same artifact can tell different stories depending on who used it, when, and for what purpose.
Choi says current LLMs don’t adequately account for these layers of context. When users ask for an accessible explanation, models can produce answers that overgeneralize or oversimplify. Reducing an event with multiple interpretations to a single sentence can obscure or distort its context.
But ensuring accuracy is another challenge. According to Choi, historical discrepancies introduced during initial training can prove difficult to correct, even when a model is subsequently asked to revise them.
The DMD is, therefore, concentrating on building data with clearly identifiable sources. The aim is to let users verify if an AI response is based on material from the National Museum of Korea to assess its reliability.
With these characteristics of artifact data in mind, the division is working with external experts to redesign its database structures around both the nature of the artifacts and the purposes for which people use the data.
Upgrade with AI
Where earlier databases focused on registering and managing objects, the new approach seeks to capture their different meanings and relationships while making relevant materials easier to find. Images, 3D data, videos, and related literature previously scattered across separate records are being connected. Metadata describing file sizes, formats, and how the data was created are also being expanded to support reuse so linking different names for the same artifact makes searching easier, for instance.
“Cultural heritage can’t be standardized like manufactured goods,” Choi says. “We need to organize and structure the data and materials we’ve accumulated in ways that reflect the character of our artifacts, while at the same time, identify connections between them. Once that foundation is in place, curators and external users like content creators, researchers, and educators will be able to find and use materials suited to their needs.”
Leaving room for discovery
After nearly two decades spent researching artifacts and developing exhibitions, Choi didn’t expect to find herself working in the DMD. Now director of the Jeju National Museum, she looks back on her digital work where there were many times her previous experience alone couldn’t guide her decisions. Exhibitions have clear opening and closing dates, and experience helps curators judge what further research and preparation will improve outcomes.
Digital projects offer fewer such reference points, however. It can be difficult to assess how far an initiative has progressed, or anticipate how emerging technologies will affect work already underway. Even so, her expertise provides a foundation to decide where change should lead, and help propose ideas to assess what new tech serves the museum’s purpose.
“Whether it’s curatorial or digital work, I hope the many things we do at museums can make a small contribution to help visitors think for themselves and arrive at their own insights,” she says.