Lee Byung-hun and Ha Ye-rin Voice British Museum’s Major Korea Exhibition
The two actors will narrate selected highlights in an audio tour for the British Museum’s exhibition spanning 2,000 years of Korean creativity, with Lee also serving as an ambassador.
South Korean actor Lee Byung-hun and Korean Australian actor Ha Ye-rin will provide voices for an audio tour accompanying the British Museum’s upcoming exhibition “Korea,” bringing prominent screen talent to a survey of two millennia of Korean art and culture.
The exhibition opens Thursday and will run through Jan. 31, 2027. Lee and Ha will deliver commentary on selected highlights, while Lee will also serve as an ambassador for the show. Their participation links internationally recognized contemporary Korean performers with an exhibition built around the country’s long artistic history.
Lee said in a video message released through the museum’s social media channels that he hoped the exhibition would introduce Korea’s traditions, history and culture while strengthening cultural exchange between Korea and the United Kingdom. Among the works he singled out was “Tiger and Magpie,” a Korean folk painting dating from roughly 1800 to 1900.
The tiger-and-magpie pairing is a familiar motif in Korean folk art. The animals were traditionally associated with warding off misfortune and bringing good luck, but the work also uses humor and satire. Lee noted that the painting presents the pair in a comic manner and offers a satirical view of the era in which it was produced. The motif has recently found a new international audience after appearing in the animated film “KPop Demon Hunters,” in which Lee voices a character.
Another major work in the exhibition is Jeong Seon’s “Clearing After Rain on Mount Inwang.” Painted in ink on paper in 1751, when Jeong was 75, the National Treasure depicts Seoul’s Mount Inwang after a rainstorm, with dark, wet rocks and mist rising through its valleys.
The museum says the exhibition traces about 2,000 years of Korean creativity, from around 300 BC to the present, through sculpture, painting and decorative arts. Much of the presentation draws on the collection of the late Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee. His family donated more than 23,000 works to the National Museum of Korea and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in 2021.
London is the touring exhibition’s third international destination following presentations in Washington, D.C., and Chicago. Ha, known internationally for appearing in the fourth season of Netflix’s “Bridgerton,” joins Lee in helping English-speaking audiences engage with key objects and their cultural context. Their audio contributions add a contemporary voice to a display designed to show the breadth and continuity of Korean artistic expression across centuries.