This paper attempts to examine the factors behind the foundation of the Yi Royal-Family Museum and its identity during the Japanese colonial period. The Yi Royal Museum 李王職博物館 was originally founded in 1909 as the first museum in Korea. Although its title seems to denote that it was a royal institution of the Chos?n Dynasty, its establishment was, in fact, a part of the Japanese colonial scheme to degrade a royal palace to a mere amusement park.*br* The collection of the Yi Royal Museum consisted primarily of artifacts that had been secretly excavated by illegal diggers and being covertly circulated in the contemporaneous art-market. Thus the museum could not function as a royal-treasure museum in a real sense: nor could it play a pivotal role for the development of museum collections in Korea. It was set up purely for the display of old objects rather than functioning with culturally informative intentions. This was mainly due to incompetence and ignorance on the part of the management of the museum. Its deputy director. Komiya Sabomatsu 小宮三保松, once stated unsympathetically in an article that Korean art could only follow the course of decline. Its curator, Suematsu Kumahiko 末松熊彦, a former tax official, was obviously not qualified for handling such a collection with scholarly understanding. Thus, the museum was not able to adequately represent Korean culture.*br* The royal collection was officially named Vi Royal-Family Museum (Yi-wangga pangmulgwan 李王家博物館) in 1912. After the forceful annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910, the Korean imperial family was demoted as being of a lesser rank than the Japanese imperial family, and the new official name for the collection was constructed to signify this demotion.*br* In the frontispiece of the museum catalogue, Yiwannga pangmulgwan sojangp'um sajinch'?p 李王家博物館所藏品寫眞帖』, there were photographs aimed to demonstrate the "improvement" Japanese colonialism had brought to Korea. Images of palace ruins were shown in contrast to a modern botanical garden, a zoo and a museum built by the Japanese. The Ch'anggy?ng palace was thus relegated to a mere amusement park.*br* In 1938, the Yi Royal-Family Museum was moved to a different site. T?ksu palace, and merged with the Yi Royal-Family Art Museum (Yi-wangga misulgwan 李王家美術館), which had been founded in 1933 to display contemporary Japanese art. Thus. Korean art was cast in the light of the declining past, whereas Japanese art was now to be projected as the future of art creation in Korea.