Korean Guidebooks Available at Natural History Museum in New York

A Korean-language guidebook will be available to visitors of the American Museum of Natural History in New York from Aug. 1. Seo Kyoung-duk, a visiting professor at Sungshin Women's University said the museum decided to provide the 50,000 guidebooks in a project to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the opening of the first Korean museum in U.S. Sponsored by the celebrity couple, Choi Soo-jong and Ha Hee-ra, the guidebooks provide information on the museum, its collections floor-by-floor, and how to navigate through the building.

Korean is the fifth language serviced at the museum after English, German, French and Spanish. The guidebook can be downloaded from the museum's website at http://www.amnh.org.

"This project can help Korean visitors enjoy the museum to its fullest, and also let our language become known to American and foreign visitors", Choi said. Ha said children were her motivation to sponsor the project. "I have heard that many Korean children visit the museum", she said. "I wanted to help make the museum experience better for them, however small the contribution might be".

Seo Kyoung-duk, a visiting professor at Sungshin Women's University, and actor Choi Soo-jong hold a guideline board in Korean to be installed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. /Yonhap

The AMNH is the third museum in New York to offer a Korean guidebook, after the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. "We plan to make Korean service possible in many world-class museums in Europe such as the Tate Modern in Britain, Musee d'Orsay in France, and the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum in Germany", Seo said.

Choi and Ha are currently goodwill ambassadors of the National Museum of Korea, and Seo serves the same position for the Independence Hall of Korea.

Advertisement