SEOUL — The National Museum of Korea has welcomed over 5 million visitors this year, marking the first time the figure has surpassed that milestone since the institution’s founding in 1945.

According to data released by the museum on Thursday, a total of 5,016,382 visitors were recorded from January 1 to October 15, 2025. Among them, 4,830,677 were domestic visitors, while 185,705 were foreign tourists.

Compared to the 2,955,789 visitors during the same period last year, this year’s attendance represents a 69.7 percent increase — the sharpest annual growth in the museum’s 80-year history.

Museum officials attributed the surge partly to a growing global fascination with Korean culture, further fueled by the international success of Netflix’s animated film “K-Pop Demon Hunters” (“KDH”), which has introduced broader audiences to elements of Korean heritage and aesthetics.

The milestone also places the National Museum of Korea among the top five museums and art institutions worldwide in terms of annual visitors.

According to statistics from the London-based art publication The Art Newspaper, the Louvre Museum in Paris led global attendance in 2024 with 8,737,050 visitors, followed by the Vatican Museums (6,825,436), the British Museum (6,479,952), The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (5,727,258), and Tate Modern (4,603,025).

With this year’s record-breaking turnout, the National Museum of Korea is now standing shoulder to shoulder with the world’s premier cultural institutions — a testament to the international rise of Korean culture and the museum’s expanding role as a global cultural destination.

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