Why Paco's Visit to Korea's National Museum Left His Friends Speechless

Fabien Yoon has a confession to make. The French-Korean TV personality, known to Korean audiences as a regular face on variety programs, works as a docent at the National Museum of Korea several days a week — and whenever anyone asks him to recommend a place to visit in Seoul, the museum is his first answer. "I'd rather go to the National Museum than the Louvre," he said on a recent episode of MBC Every1's long-running travel variety show Welcome, First Time in Korea?, airing March 26, 2026. "It's a place you absolutely have to visit."

The episode paired Fabien's remarks with a visit from Paco, the French content creator and social media personality who has become unexpectedly famous in Korea — partly for his association with the Eiffel Tower, partly for the enthusiasm he brings to experiencing Korean culture on camera. Paco traveled to the National Museum with friends Max and Jamil, a trip he had reportedly requested all the way from France before even arriving in Seoul.

Paco at the Museum: A Fan Before He Arrived

Welcome, First Time in Korea? has built its appeal on a specific dynamic: watching visitors from outside Korea encounter the country for the first time, without the filter of a tourist itinerary designed to impress. What happens when the camera follows Paco into one of the world's largest museums tends to be genuinely engaging because Paco's curiosity is unperformed. He had done his reading before the trip. When a museum guide mentioned the building's history — the National Museum has been relocated multiple times throughout Korea's modern history before settling at its current location in Yongsan — Paco already knew. The guide was visibly surprised.

Max and Jamil, Paco's companions for the visit, came without the same background knowledge. Jamil's reaction to the main hall became the episode's breakout moment: he compared it favorably to the Louvre, calling the experience "cool in a different way — more simple, yet more intense. More contemporary and minimalist." He described feeling overwhelmed by the building itself before even engaging with the contents. It is the kind of reaction that the museum's designers likely hoped for: the building was designed to carry meaning before a single exhibit is read.

Why the National Museum Is Trending

The timing of the episode was not coincidental. The National Museum of Korea has seen a significant surge in attention in 2026, partly because of BTS. The group's fifth studio album ARIRANG includes a track called "No. 29," which features a field recording of the Divine Bell of King Seongdeok — formally Korea's National Treasure No. 29 — housed at the National Museum's permanent collection. Since the album's release on March 20, ARMY members have been visiting the museum's third floor to experience the bell's sound and vibration in person. Staff at the museum reported that the relevant gallery has seen its highest foot traffic since the museum opened at its current site.

The convergence of BTS's return and a popular variety show episode — both featuring the same cultural institution on the same week — created an unusual moment for the museum's public profile. Tourism organizers have noted a sharp increase in search interest for the museum from international visitors, and the museum has been highlighted in several global travel publications as an emerging destination beyond the usual Seoul itinerary.

The Show's Enduring Formula

Welcome, First Time in Korea? has been running since 2017, and its formula has held up because the premise is genuinely reproducible: put people who don't know Korea in front of things that Koreans take for granted, and watch what they notice. The show has featured guests from dozens of countries over the years, and the recurring discovery is that outsider perspectives often illuminate aspects of Korean culture that domestic viewers have stopped seeing clearly.

Paco's episode works in this mode. His knowledge of the museum before arriving — the kind of preparation that reflects genuine interest rather than television homework — gave the visit a different texture than the typical first-timer encounter. It suggested something that the show has been demonstrating for nearly a decade: that Korea's cultural institutions are not just tourist stops for people who have already bought into K-pop or K-drama, but genuine destinations that hold up on their own terms for visitors who come curious and leave having learned something.

Fabien's role in the episode as a bridge figure — a French person who has absorbed enough Korean culture to serve as a museum docent — adds a layer that the show handles well. He is neither fully insider nor outsider, and the episode uses that position to move between explanations for first-time visitors and observations that land differently once you know the context. His declaration that the National Museum should be on every visitor's list was not scripted enthusiasm; it was the conclusion of someone who has been walking those halls for years and keeps finding reasons to come back.

Korea's Cultural Pull Beyond Pop

The episode fits into a larger pattern that Welcome, First Time in Korea? has been documenting in real time: Korea's cultural appeal has broadened well beyond the entry points of K-pop and K-drama. Visitors are arriving with knowledge of Korean history, architecture, food culture, and traditional arts — sometimes in more depth than the hosts of the show expect. Paco, who built his Korean following through social media content about everyday life in France, has become a kind of inadvertent ambassador: he is interested in Korea not because he was sold a product but because he found it genuinely interesting and shared that interest online.

That kind of organic enthusiasm, captured on a long-running variety show, is a different advertisement for Korean culture than any official campaign could provide. The National Museum visit, with its surprise docent, its Louvre comparison, and Paco's pre-trip research, made for compelling television — and, as the museum's foot traffic data suggests, compelling enough to prompt people to book flights.