Museums have changed and developed continuously through the history of mankind. Accordingly, the role of museum professionals has also been diversified and specialized. Not all museum staff can be considered, in the true sense of the word, museum professionals Museum professionals should be limited to curators, catalogers, educators, conservators and exhibition designers who have as part of their qualifications a standard of professional knowledge on the theories and skills required for museurn work, as well as ethics for museurn professionals. The other staff members should be referred to as museum workers. The curator is a core constituent of the museum. While the term 'curator' is used in a naπow sense in overseas museums as a result of division of duty or specialization, it is used in a far broader sense in Korea, and includes researchers, educators, collection managers and conservators here. The certification system for curators, which has been enforced since 2000, is worthwhile from the viewpoint that it validates the role and status of a curator. However, its enforcement has exposed several problems in the system, including qualifications of prospective curators. Systematic and high quality training programs are needed to produce qualified curators. In the late 1990s, a nurnber of graduate courses to train museum professionals, including curators, were established in addition to the traditional museurn collection-related disciplines from which most of curators came. However, these graduate comses are deficient in several aspects, including educational environment and content, and finance. Most comses lack clear objectives for training and the number of professors, and they overlook the irnportance of knowledge about collection-related disciplines that should be a precondition for entering graduate comses. In addition, they are all evening courses with similar curricula. Thus, it is difficult to provide internship experience under professional supervision. To correct these problems, thorough review and adjustment of current graduate courses are needed. All evening courses should be divided into day courses and evening courses. Day courses should be organized as training courses for future museum professionals, and curriculum and student selection standards should be improved. Evening courses should be recoganized as retraining or in-career training courses for career professionals. It is also desirable that the national museum of Korea establish an exclusive high quality training course for curators and a career development program. Museum studies is not yet an independent academic discipline. To date, it has been more effective in interdisciplinary collaborations with other disciplines. It is counter productive, therefore, to insist that only students in collection-related disciplines are eligible for curatorial positions. Excellent curators can come from concerted collaborations between collection- related disciplines and musewn studies. Retraining or in-career training programs are as important as regular training programs. In-career training programs enable curators and other professionals to acquire knowledge and technical skills of other discipline areas on the top of the knowledge and skills of their own fields. A research survey on in-career training among curators and professionals in Korean museuns shows that they are aware of the necessity of in-career training in both collection related areas and museum studies, and that they do have actual experiences of training on a minimal basis. On the other hand, understanding about the necessity of career development training for mid-career professionals was very low. Given that in-career training programs in developed counuies tend to be focused more on marketing and management for mid- and high-level careers, the survey shows that Korea is not yet preparecl even for such basic career development training in areas like leadership, which is the key to museum management. Survey participants chose museums and museum associations as the two most appropriate institutions for providing training. It is notable that the government and affiliated institutions, which have been responsible for most training programs, received less attention. All musewn programs, including exhibitions, education, collection care and conservation, will be stabilized and improved only if a museum secures top quality curators and other museum professionals who received systematic and high quality training and continuous retraining courses.