This article aims to criticise the folklore and folklife policy about archive and museum of the Korean
government. The folkloristics as social science of me and us makes us to take time for self-examination.
It must keep always its critical distance from government. However it seems to me that the Korean
folklorists could not lead the government but follow it till now. I think that the most important ideology
for the folklore and folklife policy must be the democracy. The other basic ideologies include the
romanticism which recognizes the value of the folklore by itself, and the Enlightenment which
acknowledges the folklore critically. It seems to me that both the romanticism and the Enlightenment need
the democracy, if not, they can be combined with the totalitarianism. Analysing the inaugural address of
the Korean presidents, the Korean successive governments from the establishment of the Korea till the
1980s have kept the enlightening but nondemocratic ideology. Only at the beginning of the 1960s the Park
Chung-hee government has claimed to stand for romantic folkloristic ideology, but it has been discarded
soon. The democratic principles were adopted in carrying out the folkloristic policies in the 90s, however
the value of the folklore was estimated by the economic utility, which can be placed under the category
of the Enlightenment. We have seen that folkloristic policies are related to the folkloristic ideologies. The
Korean government did not know the necessities to collect and study the folkloristic materials, because
they had not any romantic and democratic principles. They have collected and preserved the minimal
cultural heritages as the properties. The relatively small folklore museum can be explained by the lack
of the necessary ideologies. I argue that the national central museum must be dissolved into the national
archaeological and historical museum and the traditional fine arts museum. In the name of the national
central museum the ‘central’ must be thrown away. The position of the national folklore museum should
be also higher. I think that the folklore archive should be under the national folklore museum, so the
collection, studies and preservation of the folklore could be connected organically. The museum must be
‘smart’ in order to let the state, professionals and ordinary people participate altogether democratically.