In South Korea, the role of natural history museums has been closely linked to the nature of the National Science Museum since shortly after liberation. However, scientists studying nature in Korea believed that natural history museums should also play a significant role in research, which led to disagreements with the Ministry of Science and Technology, which saw science museums primarily as public relations spaces. As a result, scientists pushed for a natural history museum in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, but this was halted due to the 1997 foreign exchange crisis. In addition, a preliminary feasibility study in 2001 highlighted problems of low economic feasibility and overlap with existing institutions with similar functions, and the National Museum of Natural History has not yet been built. The Korean National Science Museum is characterized as a comprehensive science museum that includes the functions of a natural history museum in addition to the functions of a science center that displays scientific artifacts and make scientific principles tangible, making it difficult to establish an independent natural history museum. Therefore, the rhetoric that Korea is the only country without a natural history museum is no longer effective. It is now necessary to clearly define the identity of a natural history museum through historical analysis of previous attempts to establish one, and to explore new approaches to overcome existing obstacles.