Seongbo Museums in Korea have been established since the 1990s for the purpose of preserving and managing the cultural assets of the temples. Early temple museums were built focusing on the prevention of theft of cultural assets but there were lots of...
Seongbo Museums in Korea have been established since the 1990s for the purpose of preserving and managing the cultural assets of the temples. Early temple museums were built focusing on the prevention of theft of cultural assets but there were lots of problems in the management in terms of manpower, budget, facilities, expertise. Now, Seongbo museums are making their efforts to develop the programs and to plan the exhibitions for the communication with the public to fit into the new era. This paper is to present a clue for the social popularization of Seongbo museum, or its management activation to catch on with trend by understanding the current management status and its
problems, for which interviews have been conducted with the those who are on the frontline to come up with these issues, thereby introducing the current status of the management and utilization of Seongbo museum. Furthermore, it has provided an opinion to popularize Seongbo museum more and more.
For now, it isn't clear to distinguish Seongbo museum from temple museum, Buddhist museum and in fact, the boundaries between the museum for religious artifacts and Seongbo museum have become blurred with the meanings of both sides intermingled. As the temple museum is often called Seongbo museum, we need to l need to think about the concept of Seongbo. Seongbo places its emphasis more on the
aspect in terms of religion than on that in terms of cultural property value, while the management of Seongbo, which is worth while being preserved on the religious grounds, is included in the that of state-managed cultural assets.
Seongbo is a religious expression based on Buddhist doctrines and beliefs with its religious value, not its historical significance, emphasized. In this paper, the terms have been unified into Seongbo museum based on such actual circumstances.
In chapter 1, the background and purpose of this study are described and the methods and ranges, including the previous studies, to conduct this study are presented. Korean literatures and previous studies have been outlined. Earlier studies mainly focused on the current state and activation measures of Buddhist museum, and the term "temple museum"
was mainly used instead of "Seongbo museum", which wasdeveloped into the utilization of museum space, digitization of contents, and Buddhist cultural assets. Recent research trend can be considered to have gone over to the development and digitization of cultural property contents, which may be in line with the effort to be made in developing the cultural contents across the society as well as the museum.
In chapter 2, the functions and roles of museums and Seongbo museums have been summarized. The components of the museum are divided into five elements (method of operation, exhibition, education, finance, preservation), which were used as the attributes to compare Seongbo museum to be dealt with.
In chapter 3, the current situations of Seongbo museums in Koreahavebeengrasped. In classifying Buddhist museums in Korea, they can be divided into classification by religious sects and classification by construction entities (Individuals, private organizations, and national and public agents). This paper has identified Seongbo museums in Korea with the Jogye sect as a center, which shows that there are 35 Seongbo museums, including Central Buddhist museum. With five representative Seongbo museums selected, interviews with them have been conducted. They are Central Buddhist museum, Seongbo museum at Woljeong temple, Seongbo museum at Tongdo temple, Seongbo museum at Songgwang temple, and Seongbo museum at Haein temple. In chapter3, interviews have been conducted, organized and analyzed based on the components of chapter 2 with National Museum of Korea used as the point of reference for comparing these Seongbo museums.
In chapter 4, the characteristics of actual operation of Seongbo museum and the plans for its improvements and utilization dealt with in chapter 3 have been described. For now, operation and management system of Seongbo museum is roughly divided into 4 items (facilities, manpower, operation management, finance) in accordance with the ordinance regarding the establishment and management of Seongbo museum enacted on July, 15, 2005 and revised on July 10, 2007. Cultural Heritage Administration had conducted the special inspections on 35 temples, identifying the operational problems from December 2013 to May 2014. According to the results of the Cultural Heritage Administration inspection, the level of managing Seongbo museums was divided into A, B, and C grade with 14 temples of A grade, 15 of B grade, and 6 of C grade. The lower level was, the more basic facilities were missing. Based on this result, the Cultural Heritage Administration planned the project to promote the operation support for Seongbo museums (2014.08.07). It has promoted the support policy for the integrated management by supporting the temples housing large quantities of artifacts, paying the expenses of operating the necessary facilities maintained in constant temperature and humidity, and hiring the professional resources. With the management systems varied by the temple, it is somewhat urgent to establish and enhance the criteria for the standard management systems of the collection of Seongbo museums. With Central Buddhist museum of the Jogye sect conducting the support project for the preservation and management of housed collections of cultural assets since 2015, it may be called a time of transition in which the management by each temple is moving into that by central government.
Apart from this, it is necessary to look for a way in which Seongbo museum becomes self-reliant. In chapter 4, a way in which Seongbo museum becomes self-reliant is presented by diving it into economic activation and non-economic one.
Necessity of expanding the publicity and education conducted only in the temples to the outreach educational service and a variety of publicity is presented in the light of non-economic aspect. It seems to be necessary to develop the attractions for the tourists by connecting the Seongbo museums for funding, which is the biggest issue for Seongbo museums and seems to be important to collaborate with the relevant local institutions and organizations.