A record number of people visited the National Museum of Korea during the first half of the year.

According to the museum on Wednesday, there were nearly two-point-71 million visitors between January and June, up 64-point-two percent from the same period last year.

The latest six-month count is the biggest since the museum moved to its current location in Seoul’s Yongsan District in 2005.

The number of foreign visitors, which has been on a gradual increase since 2023 in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, stood at 97-thousand-985, breaking the record for the January-June period.

An official at the museum attributed the increase to the global popularity of Korean cultural content, saying this extends to the country’s traditional culture.