At this exhibition, 81 companies specializing in cultural heritage preservation, disaster prevention, repair and restoration, digital heritage, and museums set up 235 booths, drawing strong attention from visitors. Among them, booths showcasing reproductions of heritage through 3D scanning and VR technology were particular highlights.
One striking case was the digital revival of the Tristram’s Woodpecker, a species nearly extinct in South Korea. Participating in a restoration project led by the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, TRIC demonstrated its work in building digital master databases and reproducing them through VR, AR, and holograms. The institute has also created 3D data models of Suwon Hwaseong Fortress and Seokguram Grotto, enabling immersive VR reconstructions. At the core of this work is precision: surface data is captured at intervals as fine as 2 millimeters, then integrated with photographic data to reconstruct a fully dimensional model.
“Everything is stored in ultra-high resolution, measured in tens of millions of gigapixels, for the future,” explained Jinsan Kim, a researcher at TRIC. “This way, even the tiniest crack can later be traced back to its original form.”
In his remarks, Cultural Heritage Administration Commissioner Jae-sook Chung emphasized, “Cultural heritage is not only something to be preserved and managed; it is a treasure that creates future value and can serve as an industry driving local development.”
(Dong-A Ilbo, Reporter Cho Jong-yeop, jjj@donga.com)
