It's the third year since the opening of the City Museum of Art.The ripple effect is "Tilting".

[Anchor]
It's been three years since the Ulsan City Museum of Art opened.

There were high expectations that the museum would revitalize the stagnant downtown of Jung-gu, Ulsan.

However, it is pointed out that the number of visitors has decreased a lot and the effect of revitalizing the commercial district around the art museum is not significant.

I'm reporter Koo Hyun-hee of Ulsan Central Broadcasting Station.

[Reporter]
This is the Ulsan Museum of Art, which opened in 2022.

In the first year of its opening, 194,000 people visited the museum, showing how much the citizens of Ulsan were thirsty for culture.More than 198,000 people visited the museum last year when the late Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee

introduced the "Lee Kun-hee Collection," which was collected alive.

But things have changed this year.

Until the end of October this year, only 80,900 visitors visited the Ulsan Museum of Art.

The number of visitors has decreased by about half in a year.

The number of visitors to the museum, which reached an average of 600 a day until last year, fell to 300 a day this year.

Merchants around the museum are also not enjoying the expected effect of the museum.

[Merchants around the museum: I just go to the museum and look, but I don't buy any snacks. We opened a lot of stores because the business wasn't good.]

Some merchants cite the scale that does not fit the city museum, lack of eye-catching exhibitions, and lack of surrounding infrastructure as reasons for the reduced number of visitors and the lack of commercial districts around it.

[Merchants around the museum: The creation of a "cultural street" started when the museum began, but there are no things to see or enjoy around it. Media art is just small....]

On top of that, the team leader in charge of the exhibition at the City Museum of Art has been vacant for more than a year.

There are no large-scale exhibitions that will catch your eye right away.

Critics point out that the effect of the art museum, which was expected to revitalize the stagnant old downtown business district, was only special.

I'm Hyunhee from JCN News.