Tourism of Mokpo

Museums

Museums in Mokpo are mostly located near Gatbawi street. The city concentrated its ability to invest researching and exhibiting space along this area. National maritime museum is one of the oldest and the only organ for having capacity to restore traditional way of navigation and types of Korean traditional ship. The official terminology of the organ was changed in 2009 as the Research institute for maritime history in 2009 to supplement some functions of the center. The reasons can be explicable in that Yellow sea has been the trade route between Chinese culture and Korean peninsula having large relics and stances of cultural exchange since three kingdoms period in early historic period.


Mokpo Natural history museum possesses the large number of relics having several exhibition rooms holding fossils from all over the world. Originally started as one building, it incorporated the cultural heritage hall as its wing to take local relics since prehistoric years. The museum has worked on collecting samples and data of organisms from the fossils of dinosaurs to insects and cetaceans found in Yellow sea. In terms of dinosaurs, the nest of eggs, found in Aphae island, was restored and disclosed to public in 2010. The length of egg reach more than 40 cm respectively, proved to be dated 80 million years ago, during Mesozoic period. Korea Forest Service chose the museum as the organ of recording its samples of insects in national database for biological resources in 2009.

Mokpo Ceramic Museum opened its hall in 2008 on the basis of supports from the government to set up ceramics, largely based on modern usuage and invited chinaware from the notable manufacturers. Meanwhile, Literature hall of Mokpo (in Hangul:목포문학관) is not far from the ceramic museum to host literature class for general public taking features writer or novels, helping growth of local demands for lifelong learning. The program of facility gains aides from Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism since 2010, visiting schools to inform local history of writing and literature.