Chuncheon National Museum

Step into the darkened gallery and hundreds of small stone faces look back at you. Smiling, sleepy or tilting their heads, these arhat figures are what made Chuncheon National Museum famous across Korea. Opened on 30 October 2002, the museum tells the history of Gangwon Province from prehistory to the late Joseon period.

History: Gangwon's first national museum

The museum was planned under a government cultural development programme of 1993, and construction began in 1995. Until then Gangwon had no national museum, so its opening meant that every province in South Korea finally had one. The main building won the Korean Institute of Architects award in 2003, and the registered collection numbers about 120,000 objects.

What to see

• Permanent Galleries 1–4: Gangwon in prehistory (hand axes and obsidian tools), antiquity (a butterfly-shaped headdress ornament, a necklace from Chodang-dong in Gangneung, horn-shaped cups), the medieval period (Buddhas of Shakyamuni and the Medicine Buddha, the stone bodhisattva from the Hansongsa temple site) and the late Joseon period (the Yujeomsa bell, the Gogun Gugok album and more).
• The arhats of the Changnyeongsa temple site in Yeongwol: the museum's signature display. As "five hundred arhats" there should be 500 figures, but only 317 were excavated, and just 64 are intact. They were first shown here in a special exhibition in 2018, which the National Museum of Korea named its exhibition of the year, and they have since become a permanent display.
• Buddhist Art of Gangwon and Geumgangsan & Gwandong Palgyeong: a Buddhist art gallery opened in November 2025, and a space devoted to paintings of the Geumgangsan mountains and the "Eight Views" of the east coast.
• Immersive video: a film on the Eight Views and the arhats shown on a screen 28 m wide, every hour on the hour from 09:00 to 17:00.
• Outdoor gardens: a dolmen garden, a garden of pagoda stones and Buddha statues, and a garden of tomb guardian figures.
• Late Joseon gallery highlights: the bronze bell of Yujeomsa temple in the Geumgangsan mountains, a painting of the appearance of the bodhisattva Damugal, a mountain-shaped brush washer and the funeral bier of Lord Cheongpung, all linked to Gangwon.

Good to know

The Changnyeongsa arhats were found in 2001 by a local resident levelling a field in Nam-myeon, Yeongwol. They are thought to have lain underground for centuries after the temple disappeared in the mid-Joseon period, and a roof tile inscribed "Changnyeongsa" found during the dig confirmed the temple's name. Unlike the polished arhats of temple halls, their simple faces look like the people next door, which is exactly why visitors love them.

Tripto tips

• Opening hours: main building 09:00–18:00, free admission and free parking. Closed on Mondays, 1 January and Seollal and Chuseok days. When a Monday is a public holiday the museum may open and close the next day instead, so check the closing-day calendar on the website.
• Children's museum: separate hours, 09:30–17:30 (last entry 17:00).
• Guides: audio guides in foreign languages are available through the National Museum exhibition guide app.
• Time needed: about 1.5–2 hours for the permanent galleries, the arhat room and the immersive film.