The purpose of this research is to propose a powerful alternative in designing knowledge portals using Topic Maps(TM). To demonstrate the power of TM in constructing knowledge portals, we designed a TM-based korean folk music(pansori) site, tested it with an existing pansoree site (pansoree.com) employing diverse query patterns: simple, advanced, associative, and cross referential queries. The results show that the TM-based site outperforms the pansoree.com in searching time and steps. The TM-based site also provide novice users who do not know pansori domain with easy access to information that they need.