Naver Labs and the Kansong Art and Culture Foundation opened a web-based VR tour of Seoul’s Kansong Art Museum on September 11, 2026 — a digital twin of Bohwagak and the “Munhwa Boguk” (“Safeguarding the Nation Through Culture”) show, built so Korea’s first private art museum is no longer locked to spring and fall open days. Coverage from The Herald Business, DigitalToday, and The Asia Business Daily lines up on the same launch.
.jpg){kind=link}
Kansong sits in Seongbuk-gu, Seoul. Its predecessor, Bohwagak, was founded in 1938 by Jeon Hyeong-pil to keep Korean cultural property from leaving the peninsula. Physical visits have long clustered around twice-yearly exhibition windows. The new tour puts Bohwagak’s visitor path on PC and mobile through the Kansong Art and Culture Foundation site: walk the route, tap an object, read the label.
What ships in the twin
Naver Labs mapped both the hall and the works from the Munhwa Boguk exhibition. DigitalToday and Herald Business both note that pieces no longer on site still appear in the twin — including a Qing-era stone lion that guarded the museum gate before a July donation to China, plus outdoor objects such as the Goesan octagonal stupa-shaped reliquary and a stone octagonal monk’s stupa that were hard to study in place.
Asia Business Daily adds that the spring show’s national treasures remain viewable online, citing pieces such as a white porcelain with blue underglaze and inlaid iron, copper, and red overglaze flower-and-insect designs, and Chusa Kim Jeong-hui’s Chimgye. Entries from a Kansong photo contest running through September 23 will also land in the VR space, per DigitalToday.
Phone-camera spatial AI, not a scanner farm
Naver Labs says the twins were built with in-house vision tech that can 3D-map spaces and objects from a smartphone camera — no high-precision scanner required. Vision Group leader Lee Dong-hwan framed the project as the next cultural step after Naver’s AR navigation at the National Museum of Korea (live since 2022) and Flying View 3D on Naver Maps, which uses novel view synthesis for sites such as Cheomseongdae in Gyeongju.
That stack is spatial intelligence first — digital twins, indoor positioning, 3D reconstruction — delivered as a browser tour rather than a Quest or Vision Pro exclusive. For Metaverse Watcher readers, the beat is the same one driving museum and heritage XR worldwide: capture once, keep access open when the building is closed, and keep a durable copy when a physical object leaves the collection.
How to enter
The Kansong Art Museum VR Tour is live on PC and mobile via the foundation’s website. No headset is required for the launch build reported today. Naver Labs has not announced a separate immersive headset port in the coverage above.
Sources: Herald Business, DigitalToday, Asia Business Daily, Edaily, Kansong Art and Culture Foundation.