In May 2007, the National Folk Museum of Korea launched Folklife Archives. It was the first case of an archives run by a national museum. Having underwent a lot of trial and error, it has collected and stored over a million items of materials. This special exhibition has been arranged to reflect on the past ten years and grope for its orientation in the future. Also, it would be an opportunity to introduce the Archives to the general public who might still wonder what it really is.

Building an archives began with collecting materials and the collecting process still underway, but the Archives has already accumulated huge records of our lives. They vary with rich contents from ancient stories orally passed down to familiar modern everyday life that all of us are well aware of. It is hardly possible to present all these vast records in one special exhibition. So this time, we arranged it to help the public learn the general process of making an archives so that they can find the answers to such questions as: “why do we make an archives?” “who collects materials?” “how do the collected materials get organized?” “how are they used?” And we also prepared the materials that has been collected so far to present the records of our lives under the title of “Scenes from a Life.”

We hope that this special occasion can provide a chance to illuminate the past 10 years of collecting materials and plan for the next 10 years as well. In addition, we hope that you can enjoy a meaningful moment with the presented records, when you look back into our lives that we have passed by in our usual hectic routine.