Seoul Museums: Which Are Free, Which Close When

Korea abolished admission charges for the permanent collections of its national museums in 2008, and the policy has held. That covers the National Museum of Korea, the National Folk Museum, the National Palace Museum and the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, and it means a visitor can spend three days in serious museums for nothing.

Special exhibitions are the exception and are ticketed individually, usually in a separate wing with its own entrance.

The private sector has partly followed. Leeum makes its permanent collection free but requires a booked slot, and municipal institutions such as Seoul Museum of Art charge nothing for their permanent displays.

What that leaves is a city where the museum budget is effectively zero and the constraint is time rather than money — which is the opposite of the problem in most European capitals.

Both stand on palace ground and neither is included in anything, because neither charges.

The National Palace Museum of Korea sits beside Exit 5 of Gyeongbokgung station and holds what survived of the court: royal seals, the screen that stood behind the throne, astronomical instruments, palanquins and robes. It runs 10:00 to 18:00, and to 21:00 on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Doing it before you walk the palace makes the empty halls outside legible.

The National Folk Museum of Korea is on the eastern side of the same grounds and covers ordinary life rather than the court — the farming year, weddings, funerals, and a reconstructed mid-century street that Korean visitors treat as a nostalgia set. Its hours follow the palace's seasonal pattern, and it stays open to 21:00 on the last Wednesday, Friday and Saturday of each month.

Neither takes the palace's Tuesday closure, which makes them the fix for arriving at Gyeongbokgung on the wrong day.

This is the part visitors rarely use. The national museums run late twice a week — the National Museum of Korea, the National Palace Museum and the contemporary history museum all stay open until 21:00 on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and the Folk Museum extends on the last Wednesday, Friday and Saturday of the month.

The last Wednesday is Korea's Culture Day, when many cultural institutions extend hours or reduce prices, and it is the single best evening in the month for anyone whose daylight went on palaces.

A practical shape for a short trip: palaces and markets by day, one museum evening on a Wednesday or Saturday, and the towers on the other nights. That way nothing competes for the same hours, and the museum part of the trip costs nothing at all.