The museums (cultural exhibition halls) operated by temples have been built most actively by the temples affiliated with the Chogey Sect since the mid-1990s. Traditionally, the Buddhist artifacts in a temple were considered more as objects of religious worship made to suit the nature of the temple buildings than as cultural heritage. However, as increases in the number of visitors posed a physical and environmental threat to them and, more seriously, as they needed to be protected from thieves, the Chogey Sect and the government authorities joined forces to establish in each region the temple museums generally known as the Sungbo museums. Though they started out in a different rationale from other public or private museums, they still need professional care to preserve and manage the Buddhist cultural heritage properly and also to perform other proper functions of a museum such as exhibition and education. Nevertheless, as the urgent need of protecting them from criminals prompted their building, they were afflicted, right from the start, with various problems arising from the lack of professional care, including preservation, exhibition and management. For a museum to serve its originally intended functions and proper social roles, an analysis of environment and artifacts must precede its actual building, with active participation of professionals. However, the temple museums depended too much on government support and did not think much of initial planning. Not surprisingly, many of them are not doing their jobs well, and some have ended up existing only on the drawing board, and some have posφoned opening after completion of their construction. Even the opened museums are not being managed by professionals trained in preservation and exhibition of cultural relics. Too many objects are crammed in such a small space that the exhibition rooms are just like storage rooms; ignoring the peculiarity of many Buddhist artifacts whose materials are highly sensitive to humidity and putting all the blame on the lack of funding, they never bother to purchase a temperature and hurnidity controller and, worse yet, some don’t even operate the already installed controllers. The Buddhist artifacts take approximately half of Korea’s public cultural heritage designated as such by the Korean govemment. In addition, the temples have other invaluable cultural objects worth preserving for the posterity. Not only should the temples be responsible for those precious artifacts, but I also hope that the government authorities should render financial support, scientific assistance and systematic management on a magnitude comparable to what is given to national and public museums. Also, considering the entertainment and educational functions of museums for citizens, I tried to see how the temple museums contributed to the cultural richness of a region with the existing exhibition prograrns and with a simple exhibition program that I designed. I believe that they can design an exhibit that can attract Buddhist believers and other people while remaining true to their originally intended functions as museums affiliated with temples. In so doing, they can better serve for the society and better define their identity. We live in an age when varieties of cultural exchange are being easily made. The distinct identity of the Korean cultural is in danger of getting blurred. Under the circumstances, the temple museums should try to become a source of ’eduinfotainment,’something of a multipurpose, multi level cultural complex so that it can do its roles as an everlasting nonprofit institution. If the temple museums, through the objects on display and metaphysical ideas of Buddhism, could offer such a ubiquitous system of quality cultural experience for the local residents, tourists and other people of the world, they would become a more important piece making up a pillar of Korean culture. It is high time that all those who are concemed in the temple museurns took greater care to make them a center of regional culture.