It has now been 107 years since Imperial Museum(1909), the first modern museum, was built in South Korea. The current number of museums in South Korea, according to 2015 National Cultural Infrastructure Conspectus, is 809. Despite having a shorter hi... It has now been 107 years since Imperial Museum(1909), the first modern museum, was built in South Korea. The current number of museums in South Korea, according to 2015 National Cultural Infrastructure Conspectus, is 809. Despite having a shorter history than their European counterparts, South Korea is fast approaching the era of 1,000 museums and, if you include art museums, already has more than 1,000 such facilities. South Korea, in 2004, became the first Asian country to host the 20th General Conference and 21st General Assembly of I and, in 2005, completed the National Museum of Korea. The recent explosion in the number of museums in South Korea began in the Third Republic of Korea days, when the Saemaeul movement led to the discovery of numerous cultural assets that were buried in the ground and the need for specially designed facilities to house them became apparent. A number of university, private, and public museums were built and, in 1990, the Ministry of Culture was formed. Then, in 1991, the Museum Act was revised, as per the National Assembly's decision, to the Museum and Art Museum Promotion Act with the goal of increasing the number of museums in the country to 1,000 and beyond. Where as only museums established and operated by municipalities and nonprofit organizations were able to be registered before, the revised act made it possible for anyone to found and register a museum, leading to an explosion in the number of private facilities throughout the land. As South Korea's economy continued to grow and new social changes such as 5-day work and school weeks were introduced, increases in expendable income and time, spurred on by a better educated public's passion for learning, created massive demand for more specialized, polished, and diverse cultural experiences. Efforts to utilize their museums and art museums as tourist attractions by municipalities such as Yeongwol-gun which, through their slogans, advertised themselves as open-air museums, also played a role. This quantitatively driven goal of building 1,000 museums, however, hasn't been without its own problems. Numerous private museums that were established without the operational or financial consultation of specialists and driven solely by the founder's desire to contribute to the society are now facing financial difficulties and find themselves unable to keep up with the changes in times while their facilities continue to age without being able to accommodate unique and entertaining exhibition strategies that will attract visitors. This study sees the answer to activating museum operation is in financial patronage. To demonstrate this point, the study collected basic patronage data from the websites of 754 museums listed in the 2014 National Cultural Infrastructure Conspectus, conducted interviews via telephone and in person, and surveyed 71 art and culture organization members and members of the general public and 58 museum workers and managers. Then the study bases the survey findings, related books, dissertations, s, and theses and explores a plan for private museums to achieve financial expansion. Part I discusses the suitability of this study, the method used, and the study’s limitations. Part II reviews major cases of patronage from the private sector, which is where patronage began, and historical cases of art and culture patronage in South Korea. Then part II investigates the level of donation awareness, donations by NGOs in 2014, and the global donation index for 2015 and looks at the level of museum patronage awareness through a survey and the current state of patronage activities via websites of domestic museums. Part III analyzes the annual s of nonprofit organizations and museums with successful supporter's associations and their membership state, reviews and interprets existing research data to find commonalities with the survey findings and identify causes of inactivity in patronage. Part IV bases the analysis findings of Part III to explore the possibility of applying examples of patronage activities by nonprofit organizations and museums to private museums and thereby formulate a plan for patronage activation. Because donations to museums must be distinguished from donations to social welfare institutions and the former must beget from recognition of social values museums offer, such as preservation and use of cultural assets for generations to come and public service, rather than from a desire to appeal to internal motives such as sympathy altruism, Part IV examines a plan for activating patronage activities that can be benchmarked by museums. Private museums have thus far lacked the awareness of and preparation for patronage as a means of raising funding, faced difficulty in securing qualified personnel, and lacked examples of donation raising by museums to benchmark, but the rapid changes taking in the forms of media available, such as portal sites, smart phones, YouTube, and social networks, has made donation collecting via multiple channels possible for private museums. Part V concludes that museums have so far been passive when it comes to their communication with the general public and the local communities. The purpose of a private museum's existence being preservation of cultural assets for future generations and educating the public rather than boasting collections amassed based on the interests and tastes of few individuals, a museum that receives no visitors fails to fulfill its reason for being. Museums of today must therefore lower their barriers of entry and live up to the expectations of today's culture consumers to fulfill their roles as cultural leaders. This study presents a plan for museums to raise, through patronage, funds needed in offering culture consumers the experience they demand, and it is our hope for the many private museums facing operational difficulties to find this study useful in fulfilling their founding objectives.
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