National Folk Museum Children’s Museum Guide: Paju Exhibition and Family Experience Details

The National Folk Museum Children’s Museum is the clearest family-focused entry point for a National Folk Museum Experience in 2026. The strongest current option is the Paju Children’s Museum permanent exhibition 《Sparkling Jumping Beans》, which opened on May 5, 2026, and is scheduled to run through December 31, 2028.¹

This guide focuses on what families can actually use: where the children’s program is centered, which age group it serves, how the Paju exhibition is positioned, and what related 2026 children’s activities have already taken place or remain relevant for planning.

National Folk Museum Children’s Museum in Paju

The National Folk Museum’s Paju branch expanded and reorganized its first-floor children’s experience room into a Children’s Museum, then introduced the permanent exhibition 《Sparkling Jumping Beans》. The museum’s webzine described the change as an expansion of the previous space by more than two times, with strengthened exhibition and hands-on content for young visitors.¹

The exhibition is aimed at children from 36 months old through age 7.¹ That age range matters for planning: this is not framed as a general school-age history exhibition, but as a child-centered experience for preschoolers and early childhood visitors. Families with older elementary students may still be interested in the broader museum, but the stated target group for this Paju Children’s Museum exhibition is younger children.

A key feature of 《Sparkling Jumping Beans》 is its connection with ‘Wish Cat Magic Card.’ The exhibition uses a created story linked to the character property while connecting children’s content with everyday life artifacts held by the museum.¹ The Bell, via Money Today, reported that the collaboration was designed to provide experience-based content at a child-friendly level by connecting the character world with the museum’s life-culture collection.²

One short statement from SAMG Entertainment captures the intended visitor experience: the company said it hoped visitors would “experience traditional culture and everyday artifacts more familiarly” through the Wish Cat characters.² In practical terms, families should expect a children’s exhibition that uses storytelling and character-led engagement rather than only display-case viewing.

Booking and Visit Planning Notes

The available source material gives one specific reservation point: the Paju Children’s Museum exhibition can be viewed after advance reservation through the official National Folk Museum Paju Children’s Museum website.² The sources provided do not include admission fees, exact session times, daily capacity, parking instructions, or cancellation rules. For those details, visitors should rely on the official reservation page before making a trip.

Because the exhibition runs until December 31, 2028, it is not a one-week holiday event.¹ Families who missed the May 2026 opening period can still plan a later visit within the stated operating window, subject to official reservation availability.

The Seoul main museum also hosted a major Children’s Day program titled ‘Children’s Day, Earth Playground’ from May 4 to May 5, 2026. The National Folk Museum announced that the event would include world culture experiences, play, sharing, and donation programs in cooperation with embassies and cultural centers from 12 countries, the Korea Ssireum Association, and Beautiful Store.³ Since those dates have passed as of May 28, 2026, this information is most useful as context for the museum’s children’s programming rather than as a current schedule.

During that May 4-5 event, visitors to Children’s Museum exhibitions were instructed to enter through the main building rather than the Children’s Museum entrance.³ That detail applied to the event period specifically, so families should not assume it remains the normal entrance procedure after the event unless the museum posts the same instruction again.

Related 2026 Children’s Programs

The 2026 Children’s Day event broadened the museum experience beyond a single exhibition. Preview coverage described folk play programs such as gonggi, country-by-country experience booths operated with 12 embassies and cultural centers, Chinese sugar craft, Indonesian traditional instruments, Spanish fan and guitar making, and an elementary school children’s ssireum competition.⁴

The Korea Ssireum Association later said it held the ‘Hanpan Children’s Ssireum Competition’ during the National Folk Museum’s ‘Children’s Day, Earth Playground’ event on May 4 and 5, 2026. Reporting stated that about 30,000 people visited over the two days, about 100 preschool children joined a ssireum experience class, and competitions were held for lower- and upper-grade elementary school boys and girls.⁵

The museum’s children’s outreach also extends beyond families who can visit Seoul or Paju. Seoul Economic Daily reported that the National Folk Museum began the first-half 2026 schedule for its ‘Traveling Children’s Museum’ on April 22, 2026, for children in rural and fishing communities. The program’s 2026 bus exhibition was reorganized under the theme ‘Four Colorful Worlds,’ and the first-half schedule runs through June 26 with five public and private museums in Gyeonggi, Chungnam, Jeonnam, and Gwangju.⁶

That traveling program has a longer track record: from 2005 through 2025, about 190,000 people participated.⁶ For families, schools, or local museums outside the capital area, it shows that the National Folk Museum’s children’s programming is not limited to the Paju Children’s Museum, even though Paju is the main current focus for a standing children’s exhibition.

작성자 소개

Patrick Choi

Administrator

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