Mokpo Maritime Heritage Exhibition Hall

A fishing net opened a 700-year-old route

A fisherman’s net pulled Chinese ceramics from the sea off Shinan. Full-scale excavation began in 1976 and became Korea’s first major underwater archaeological project: divers found a large merchant ship that had sunk in 1323 while sailing from China toward Japan, together with tens of thousands of objects

The excavation continued through 1984. Divers worked in strong tidal currents and near-zero visibility, descending along guide lines to a grid laid over the wreck. The surviving hull and cargo had been protected by seabed mud for more than six centuries

The ship now known as the Shinan vessel gives the museum its central story. The hull was about 34 metres in overall scale, and the recovered material turns a single lost voyage into an unusually detailed record of medieval maritime trade

Twenty-seven thousand objects, one voyage

Roughly 27,000 objects were recovered from the Shinan wreck, including about 25,000 Chinese ceramics. The ship carried much more than porcelain and celadon. Pepper, spices and rosewood came from Southeast Asia; Goryeo celadon, bronze mirrors and spoons link the cargo to Korea; Japanese lacquerware, Seto ware, mirrors and weapons point toward the voyage’s destination

The mixture matters because the ship was travelling from China to Japan through waters off Goryeo. A wreck that might otherwise be described simply as a Yuan-period merchant vessel instead preserves goods moving through several Asian economies at once

The Shinan room is only one part of the permanent exhibition. Four galleries cover Korean maritime exchange, Asian maritime exchange, underwater excavation and traditional Korean ships. Across the museum, four excavated wrecks and roughly 7,700 objects and research materials are displayed, while reconstructed traditional vessels continue the ship story outside

From seabed to research institute

The Shinan excavation did more than fill display cases. Conserving a waterlogged wooden hull and thousands of recovered objects required a new institutional base. A Mokpo conservation center opened in 1981 while the excavation was still underway, and the National Maritime Heritage Exhibition Hall opened in 1994

That origin still shapes the place. The exhibition hall shares its main building with the National Research Institute of Maritime Heritage, whose work extends from underwater survey and excavation to conservation, ship research and public exhibition. A separate conservation annex contains underwater-heritage treatment facilities and a ship restoration room

The museum’s underwater-excavation gallery makes that process visible to visitors through survey methods, recovery techniques and an immersive wreck-site presentation. The traditional-ships gallery then moves from archaeological wrecks to Korean hull forms and sailing routes, including the Joseon diplomatic ships used for missions to Japan

In that sense, the Shinan discovery never became only a finished museum story. The accidental find that launched Korean underwater archaeology also produced the conservation and research system that still operates beside the galleries

Before you go

For a shorter visit, the clearest sequence starts with the Shinan material and Asian Maritime Exchange gallery on the first floor, then moves upstairs to the underwater-excavation and traditional-ships rooms. The outdoor reconstructed vessels work best as the final layer because the galleries have already explained what archaeologists learn from hull structure and cargo