ABSTRACT
The political, cultural, social and financial specificities of a national museum shaped by the nation-building process should not be undermined by the political naivety and essential nationalism that produce the museum solution. This chapter examines the national character of the National Museum of Korea across the period of its making and remaking, from its foundation as a colonial museum through the various changes it underwent as part of postcolonial nation-building. The Governor-General's building was one the most ambitious of the Japan's colonial architectural projects. Government has played a leading role in the reinvention of South Korea as a world player; the chapter ends by asking when, in the development of a liberal democracy, a government needs to step back from making the nation in the arts. A new museum was built in a South Korea engaging in increasingly liberal politics which wished to see the nation as a major player on the stage of global cultural politics.
