김재원 金載元

Archaeologist and museum director, first director of the National Museum of Korea

Life & career

Kim Jae-won (金載元, 1909-1990) was an archaeologist born on 22 February 1909 in Hamju, South Hamgyeong; his clan seat was Jeonju and his pen name Yeodang (藜堂). After graduating from Hamheung Higher Common School he studied education at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, completing the bachelor's and master's courses, and then received a doctorate in archaeology in the humanities from the same university's graduate school. He is said to have studied pedagogy, German and Oriental archaeology in Germany and Belgium for about eleven years.

After liberation he became the first director of the National Museum (today's National Museum of Korea) and is known to have led it for a long period from 1945 to 1970. When the military situation became urgent after the Chinese intervention in December 1950, he as director moved important collections to Busan with the help of US military vehicles and railways, and research papers explain that the museum kept holding academic lectures in Busan during the war. The 1957 US touring exhibition Korean National Treasures also took place during his tenure. One account says that in 1968, as chairman of the East Asian Culture Research Committee of the Harvard-Yenching Institute's Seoul branch, he founded the Korean Archaeological Society and became its first president, but few sources confirm this, so it is recorded only as reported.

He also taught as a professor at Korea University, Yonsei University and Seoul National University, and left an autobiography, A Lifetime with the Museum (1992), and several essay collections. His first daughter Kim Ri-na is an art historian and his third daughter Kim Young-na later also served as director of the National Museum of Korea, setting a record as the first father-and-daughter directors. Born in Hamgyeong, trained in Germany and builder of the museum's foundations, his life is an example of a northern-born Jeonju Kim descendant who served the country through scholarship.

Father and Daughter as Museum Directors

Kim Jae-won was the first director of the National Museum, and his third daughter Kim Young-na also served as director of the National Museum of Korea, setting the record as the first father and daughter to do so. Kim Young-na is an art historian whose clan is also recorded as Jeonju in Wikipedia.

Descendants

His daughters include Kim Ri-na, an art historian, and Kim Young-na, a former director of the National Museum of Korea. See also the Jeonju Kim clan page.

Other 전주 김씨 figures