Cultural heritage had been defined and maintained centered around physical structures or tangible features. It is only recently that the focus has shifted to nonphysical and intangible values of heritage, which incorporate natural, social, and cultural elements. Roles of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) are increasingly emphasized, as it involves the respect for cultural diversity and the representativeness of each cultural heritage, rather than just recognizing excellent universal values accepted by all. ICH has been created, practiced and used by people and has been inherited through generations in a cultural context. The viability of ICH is like a person’s life cycle. As our life is the finite period between birth and death, heritage is also doomed to disappear without a conscious effort to continue the viability of created heritage. Heritage has a finite life and transmission is the force to keep it alive.\n\nKorea is the only divided country in the world. Seventy years have passed since the Korean War, but the wounds of the war and the pain of the division still remain in the hearts of displaced people and dispersed families. Even amidst such a tragedy, there are intangible cultural properties of North Korea that have been transmitted in the South. One of them is “Aewonseong,” a song that has been designated in South Korea as an intangible cultural property of the ibuk odo (which literally means five northern provinces). “Aewonseong” (哀怨聲) reflects the joys and sorrows of life and expresses sounds of sadness and lamentation as the name suggests. People living in the barren areas of Hamgyeong-Do in the North used to hum the song when things were hard and tiring. Currently in South Korea, the song is transmitted by displaced people as a form of a musical performance accompanied by instruments and dance. It allows those people to find consolation and ease their longing for their hometown, thus providing a special sense of identity. Although the song is being practiced differently compared to its original version performed in the North, it still has the same function of consoling people now living in the southern part of the peninsula.\n\nDuring the thirteenth Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the ICH, which was held in Mauritius in November 2018, Traditional Korean Wrestling, ssirum/ssireum was jointly inscribed on the Representative List of the ICH of Humanity. The joint inscription was especially meaningful as it was intended for ‘peace and reconciliation.’ Since 2014, ICHCAP has organized biennial sub-regional meetings of five Northeast Asian countries (South Korea, Mongolia, China, Japan, and North Korea). The participants looked at the status of ICH safeguarding in North Korea and discussed the necessity for stronger exchange and cooperation in the fields of ICH in the region, laying a collaborative foundation for support for North Korea. This year in October, the fourth sub-regional meeting will take place in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, under the subject of the safeguarding of shared heritage in East Asia.\n\nAccording to the ‘Kit of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage’ published by UNESCO, safeguarding activities promote reconciliation through intercultural dialogue and respect for cultural diversity around the practice of living heritage and thus constitute an effective and sustainable way to restore peace and security within society. Even in the situation of national division, the viability of ICH can bring together different parties beyond the border to share a collective memory and the values of heritage. As such, shared heritage can play a vital role in maintaining peace and security in the two Koreas. ICH, which has survived to date and can be shared by both peoples, could hopefully help achieve inter-Korean cooperation and further establish a culture of peace in Northeast Asia.\n\nPhoto : Joining two Koreas © Shutterstock/eamesBot

The University of Santo Tomas-Graduate School Center for Conservation of Cultural Property and the Environment in the Tropics (USTGS-CCCPET) was established in 2003 primarily to advance research and advocacy on heritage conservation and sustainable development. At a time when heritage was at risk all over the world, pressured by globalization, climate change, migration, tourism, and terrorism, the search for memory and identity became more pronounced and more assertive.

Madam Irina Bokova (Director-General of UNESCO), Representatives from UNESCO regional Offices and NATCOMs, Experts, Scholars, National and International Practitioners and Communities in the Asia-Pacific Region, and Our Hosts the Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea: It gives me great pleasure to be able to present here today on this auspicious occasion. Distinguished participants and Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to thank the organisers for supporting my attendance at this forum and to congratulate ICHCAP on its success in being established as a Category 2 Centre in the Asia-Pacific region and for bringing us together at this forum to provide an opportunity to exchange information, communicate, and network.

This paper begins with illustrating the vulnerability and resilience of Pacific island countries (PICs) to put intangible cultural heritage (ICH) safeguarding in a broader context of sustainable development for the Pacific region. The paper first presents a summarised history of the Pacific World Heritage Programme and the progress of its implementation since the adoption of the World Heritage Convention in 1972. It then outlines the development of the Pacific ICH Programme since the preparatory phase of the ICH Convention, adopted in 2003, to the organisation of multi-stakeholder consultations in seven PICs in 2010 and 2011. The paper identifies two tasks: i) organisation of consultations on ICH safeguarding and ii) elaboration of a mid-term strategy for ICH safeguarding in the Pacific. As a conclusion, the paper presents a strategy to focus on the contribution of Pacific ICH to the achievements of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other internationally agreed goals such as Education for All (EFA). The paper argues that this could be done by building upon on-going good practices and by strategically highlighting the central role of ICH in achieving\nsustainable development of communities.

Among the five countries making up the North-East Asian region, four of them—the Republic of Korea (South Korea), China, Japan, and the Democratic People’sof Korea (North Korea)—have a lot of common cultural characteristics based on their historically agrarian lifestyles and the influence of Confucianism and Buddhism. Mongolia, as nomadic society, crisscrossing the vast grasslands with livestock, displays different cultural characteristics. In addition, even within the four nations that share common elements, each country’s natural environment facilitates cultural differences among them. This essentially means that the North-East Asian region is home to the simultaneous convergence and divergence of culture. So, in the process of cultural development in the region, the interaction between homogeneous and heterogeneous elements materialised into various forms intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and cultural expressions with unique features but similar origins.

This paper begins by reviewing the current implementation of the 2003 Convention at the international level, notably its ratification status and the inscriptions on its two lists—the Urgent Safeguarding List and the Representative List—as well as on the Register of Best Safeguarding Practices. It then examines how procedures to process nominations and inscriptions on the lists and register have been improved and rationalised since drawing up the first version of the Operational Directives in 2008.The paper takes note of the significance of the capacity-building activities undertaken by the UNESCO Secretariat. It then addresses the implementation of the Convention at the national level on the basis of the First Periodical Reports on the implementation of the Convention that have recently been submitted to the Committee. Various fundamental issues are brought to light.Finally, the paper discusses the importance of distributing tasks among the three East-Asian Category 2 Centres for the implementation of the 2003 Convention in the Republic of Korea, the People’s Republic of China, and Japan and underscores the significant roles that have been entrusted to the information and networking centre in the Republic of Korea.

On this beautiful day of the harvesting season in autumn, when hundreds of fruits and grains are ripening and trees in the mountains and fields are tinging maple colours, I am very delighted and filled with the feeling of great honor that our Centre of UNESCO for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia and Pacific Region (ICHCAP) is privileged to host this year International Conference on Safeguarding ICH to reflect on the creative values and productive utility of our intangible heritage that our forefathers have inherited to us.

In reality, safeguarding ICH (or whatever term one uses)1 has been an important issue for the large majority of countries around the globe and their citizens long before the 2003 Convention was adopted. The ‘problem’ of ICH, therefore, was a lack of formal international recognition of this reality and a cultural heritage protection paradigm that prioritised monumental European cultural forms over local and indigenous ones and that, when it addressed traditional culture, it did so from a heavily researcher-oriented viewpoint. The experience of those countries that are Parties to the 2003 Convention shows clearly that ICH in all its various forms is a rich social and, often, economic and even political resource that provides a variety of possible routes towards sustainable models of development. This variety is determined by many social, cultural, economic, political, and environmental factors and is itself part of the invaluable diversity of this form of heritage.

My presentation is called ‘New Trends and Directions in the 2003 Convention’ although it is a bit hard to say which trends are new because this is really the first round of periodic reporting we are getting. So what I want to do is give you a summary of the information received by UNESCO following the start of the periodic reporting process. So they are obviously new directions because this is the first time. Some results are surprising and unanticipated, and others are to be expected.