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Digital Korean National Culture Heritage

Bong-seok Kong
Ministry of Culture and Tourism
Korea

The Digital Korean National Culture Heritage project has progressed as a part of a systemization project to link and utilize knowledge to information. Its main purpose is to control and distribute Koreas valuable national properties, such as relics, treasures and important folklore in all museums, by establishing a synthetic service systems. This project has been prepared by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Korea in association with the Cultural Properties Administration, the National Museum of Korea, and the National Folk Museum of Korea. Also included in this group are 10 national museums, 10 public museums, 2 private museums and 4 university museums. In total, 41 museums and departments are participating in this project. Hyundai Information Technology Company has developed the system and database. To promote the project, 13 billion and 200 million won (13.2 billion won) has been invested for over 2 years. Over 1130 people have worked on this national project daily while 198,000 people have worked annually.

The goal of this project is to extend the system to include approximately 250 museums and have investments reach 65 billion won by 2005. By finishing this project, people can easily obtain and experience information anywhere via the Internet. This will certainly aid History major students and specialists in Archaeology and folklore to get at the information they really need. Most museums have a poor Internet environment so this project has significant importance in establishing a good information system. The establishment of an efficient administration for cultural properties enables us to decrease costs and prevent cultural properties from being damaged or lost.