SEOUL — Cyber diplomatic group VANK has introduced a global initiative aimed at rectifying the missing or misleading provenance records of plundered artifacts housed in prominent international museums.

Unveiled on November 14—coinciding with the International Day against the Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Property—the "HeritageBack" campaign focuses on the historical parallels of imperialist exploitation experienced by nations across Asia and Africa during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

As part of the initiative, VANK recently launched a dedicated digital platform comparing 16 pairs of cultural assets from South Korea and Africa that were seized through similar colonial maneuvers. The group's preliminary investigation into prominent institutions, including the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, uncovered significant discrepancies in how acquisitions are documented online.

According to VANK's findings, nearly half of the British Museum's online records concerning colonial military expeditions—such as the 1897 invasion of Benin and the 1868 Magdala Expedition—fail to disclose the context of looting. Instead, many items are vaguely categorized as routine "purchases" or acquisitions from "local collectors," while dozens of Korean artifacts from the early 20th century lack meaningful provenance details entirely.

Similarly, researchers at VANK found internal contradictions within the Metropolitan Museum of Art's digital catalogs, where English-language texts acknowledge the violent removal of certain royal items, while translated summaries or credit lines omit these facts and misclassify geographic details.

VANK plans to formally petition both museums to update their documentation accurately and intends to broaden its scope to investigate other global institutions, warning that uncorrected digital records and AI-generated answers risk laundering stolen historical assets into benign "donations."

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