The National Museum of Korea (NMK) is designed to protect and showcase centuries of the nation's history. For nearly two weeks, its monumental “Path of History” lobby is doing something else entirely: pulsing to the beats of K-pop icon BLACKPINK's new release. Ahead of the girl group's third mini-album "DEADLINE," which drops Friday at 2 p.m., BLACKPINK partnered with the country's flagship museum for a special project running through March 8. The collaboration opened with a prerelease listening event held inside the museum's main ground floor atrium, Thursday, marking the first time the institution has allowed its symbolic central space to be used for a K-pop partnership. Beneath an eight-meter digital rendering of the Gwanggaeto Stele, a towering monument commemorating the Goruryeo era's (37 BCE-668 CE) King Gwanggaeto the Great, guests formed a loose but eager circle as the album's five new tracks filled the vast hall. From the viral prerelease single "JUMP" to its widely-anticipated title track "GO," the music reverberated against stone and glass surfaces more accustomed to the