When RM of BTS was named global ambassador for the National Museum of Korea in June 2026, his first official move wasn't a photoshoot — it was a quiet walk through a special exhibition of an 18th-century painter named Kim Hong-do (김홍도). Within hours, a Joseon-dynasty artist was trending with fans worldwide asking the obvious question: who is this guy, and why does the biggest name in K-pop care?
Joseon's superstar painter
Kim Hong-do (1745-1806), better known by his pen name Danwon (단원), was the defining painter of late Joseon Korea. He had the royal gig — court painter to King Jeongjo, trusted with state ceremonies and royal portraits — and the range: landscapes, flowers and birds, Buddhist subjects, documentary court scenes. Korea's National Museum currently gathers 96 of his works in one hall, from misty seascapes to a painting of a Pyongyang governor's banquet crowded with more than 2,500 individual figures.
But that's not why Koreans love him.
The painter of ordinary people
Ssireum (씨름, Wrestling), from Kim Hong-do's Treasure-designated genre album.
National Museum of Korea collection — public domain.
Kim Hong-do's immortal works are his pungsokhwa (풍속화, genre paintings) — quick, warm, funny scenes of everyday Joseon life. The Treasure-designated Danwon pungsokdocheop album includes the two images every Korean grows up with: Ssireum (씨름), where a ring of spectators leans into a wrestling match — including one distracted snack vendor — and Mudong (무동), a boy dancing mid-leap to a folk band.
No kings. No idealized mountains borrowed from Chinese manuals. Just people — laughing, straining, showing off. In an era when "serious" art meant looking away from daily life, Kim Hong-do pointed straight at it and found it worth painting. That's why the RM connection lands: an artist documenting the texture of ordinary Korean joy is, functionally, the great-great-grandfather of every fancam, variety show, and slice-of-life music video K-culture exports today.
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The RM effect
Fans have long tracked RM's museum visits the way they track photocard prices — his gallery posts routinely send attendance soaring, a phenomenon Korean museums openly call the "RM effect." The ambassador appointment made it official policy: Korea is using its biggest pop export to route global attention toward its classical culture. Judging by the crowds at the Kim Hong-do exhibition — BTS leader one week, packed galleries the next — it works.
How to read a Kim Hong-do genre scene
His best-known images reward slow looking because the story is distributed across a crowd. Start with the strongest action—the wrestlers in Ssireum or the dancer in Mudong—then follow the faces, hands, and empty spaces around it. Spectators lean, laugh, eat, play instruments, or look away. Those reactions tell you how the central event feels without a written caption.
Composition matters too. Kim often uses open paper as active space rather than filling every corner with architecture or landscape. A loose circle of figures can become an arena; a few diagonal bodies can imply rhythm. Clothing and posture help distinguish occupations and social roles, but the scenes should not be read as camera-like transcripts of one afternoon. They are composed works shaped by an artist’s observation, selection, and humor.
Kim Hong-do is more than the schoolbook album
Foreign introductions often reduce him to a “painter of ordinary people.” The museum record is broader: he worked within the royal painting bureau and produced landscapes, portraits, Buddhist subjects, flowers and animals, documentary images, and court commissions. Genre scenes are the easiest entry point, not his entire career.
That distinction also explains his historical importance. Kim Hong-do could operate inside an elite court system while giving visual attention to work, play, music, and public gathering. Modern viewers encounter late-Joseon society through those images, but responsible viewing keeps two ideas together: they contain valuable observations, and they remain artworks rather than neutral photographs.
Seeing it yourself
- The exhibition: Danwon Kim Hong-do: Painting an Era, National Museum of Korea (Seoul), through August 2, 2026 — 50 titles, 96 works, including 11 leaves of the genre album. Admission is free.
- Plan around it: if you're flying in for a concert anyway (see our survival guide to Korean ticketing), the museum is a subway ride from most of Seoul — and the gift shop's museum-goods line has become a fan collectible in its own right.
- From abroad: the museum's online collection database serves high-resolution scans of the genre album — the paintings are public domain, and the details (check the snack vendor) reward zooming in.
A museum checklist for first-time viewers
Begin with the object label: title, approximate date, material, format, and collection. English translations of Korean titles can vary, so note the Korean title or accession information when you want to find the same work later. Look at scale before relying on a phone image; an album leaf, screen, hanging scroll, and documentary painting create different viewing experiences.
Then separate what is visible from what is interpretation. You can describe a figure’s posture, placement, clothing, or relationship to the crowd directly. Claims about identity, class, humor, or historical custom should be checked against the museum’s curatorial explanation rather than inferred from one detail. Genre paintings are rich evidence, but they do not represent every person or province in late Joseon.
If the temporary exhibition has ended, search the National Museum of Korea’s collection and exhibition archives rather than relying on an old travel post. Works may rotate for conservation, and an online image does not guarantee that the original is currently on view. Continue the wider heritage connection with our explanation of Arirang and BTS’s tour title, another case where a modern fandom doorway leads to a much older Korean tradition.