Recently, the word yu san seul, which commonly refers to a Chinese dish, has become more common in Korea after popular comedian Jae-seok Yu debuted as a trot singer under the stage name Yoo San-seul. Trot music, which was the exclusive property of older generations, is now appealing to the audience of all ages. The recent trot craze has been heated through Hangout with Yoo (a reality TV show produced by Yoo San-seul) and various trot audition programs. Traditional cultural contents, once viewed as boring and old-fashioned, are now not just bringing memories to the elderly but also catching on among younger people who are interested in newness through diverse media outlets.\n\nLikewise, ssireum, Korea’s folk wrestling and traditional culture, is gaining huge popularity among young generations. Ssireum was an extremely popular sport in the 1980s and 1990s, but it slowly lost much of its former glory and became a mere folk game that barely kept itself in existence as a holiday sport. In 2018, in recognition of its value, ssireum was jointly inscribed by North and South Korea on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. However, it still failed to draw public attention, as there were old stereotypes about traditional sports and modern audiences already turned their backs on the traditional wrestling. Then, the variety program Joy of Ssireum has rekindled people’s interest in the sport. The ssireum arena is filled with spectators of all ages who are carrying placards of their favorite contestants. It seems like the ssireum fandom is no less than idols. In other words, ssireum is seeing its resurgence as an enjoyable and entertaining form of traditional sport. It is also expected to contribute to the inheritance and development of various other traditional sports.\n\nThanks to easily accessible media channels, our traditions are effectively transformed into original cultural contents that attract almost as much attention as in the past. Public attention is essential for the transmission and development of traditional culture. Now that ‘retro’ pop culture is in, this could be a good turning point for traditional cultural contents.\n\nPhoto : Ssireum, Korea's folk wrestling Ⓒ ShutterStock

Complying with UNESCO’s safeguarding policy for ICH, Korea’s Cultural Heritage Administration attempted to initiate a digital inventory project in 2010. A group of researchers of the different fields including ICH specialists, folklorists, anthropologists, and computer scientists joined this project. I participated in this project as director. The project team endeavored to develop a new experimental ICH inventorying methodology using a new concept of collective intelligence and advanced information ethnologies. The team established Ichpedia, a web-based ICH inventory and archives in Korea.

The role of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) in safeguarding intangible cultural heritage has evolved from its mandate regarding cultural heritage generally. ICOMOS was created in a world that had experienced the destruction of significant heritage places during World War II and faced the threat of destruction throughout the Cold War period. The Second Congress of Architects, Conservationists and Technicians of Historical Monuments held in Venice in May 1964 produced the Venice Charter and established ICOMOS.

Edward Freeman defined a stakeholder as any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of an organization’s objectives. In business management literature, stakeholders are people or groups who have the power to directly affect an organization’s future. Others stress that it is necessary to consider a very broad range of individuals, groups, communities, and organizations, including the less powerful: the affected that can also affect, when taken into consideration. Thinking in terms of stakeholders and using mapping techniques, grids, and tools to identify relevant stakeholders have become crucial steps in strategic planning in the twenty-first century, not only in business contexts but also in culture management. In contexts of consensus building, the central process of safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, it is an important technique not only for bringing together as much potentially relevant information and experience as possible but also for trying to act in an ethical way and cultivate sustainable development.

Relative to the creative economy of South Korea, the importance of the Eurasian Turkic states is growing. The reorganized resource-rich countries of the Eurasian continent, ancient nations belonging to the Silk Road, have established themselves from the beginning of the 21st century as political and economic powers in the international arena. CIS countries such as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan were protagonists of the great Silk Road that linked the East and the West that had been cut off from each other in ancient times.

Thundukuna is a special mat woven from reeds indigenous to the marshlands of Maldives. The reed is locally known as hau. Mat weaving from hau dates back some two hundred years, and this long history is mostly associated with the southernmost atolls.

Pebaek was one of the important ritual procedures of a traditional wedding ceremony. The ritual was performed at the groom’s house after the bride finished the wedding ceremony at her house. Pebaek was to introduce herself properly to her new in-laws and, her rst greetings were to the inlaw parents and relatives.

The food we eat is an important part of culture. It is also an expression of community identity. As American folklorist Millie Rahn writes, The kitchen, historically, is the place where families gather and where the everyday and the ceremonial meet and overlap. Here families interact and share private traditions, expressing identity through their food to each other and to the world. Creativity is alive in this space, from daily mealtimes to more elaborate feasts that mark rites of passage, religious and secular holidays, and other special events. This is where knowledge is passed on, from traditional ways of preparing and using various ingredients, implements, tools, and techniques to legends, stories, anecdotes, and cultural exchanges that have become part of familial and regional folklife. We all eat, and associate different layers of cultural meaning to the food we consume. Explorations of food, then, can be an easy conduit into the complex world of intangible cultural heritage. This article gives several examples from the safeguarding initiatives of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador that have used foodways as a means to get people thinking about, and engaged with, concepts of cultural transmission and heritage conservation.

The biggest North Korean migrant community outside East Asia is located in a somewhat unlikely place, New Malden, UK, a suburb in southwest London (see Figure 1). Approximately 1,000 North Koreans live alongside the established community of over 12,000 South Koreans. In the foreign kitchen, what North Korean migrants do is recreate authentic traditional North Korean food that they have not had for such a long time. Decades of famine and national isolation have alienated people from basic meals and dishes that are part of the history and traditions of their country.

The term pastellessa represents an extraordinary combination of food, culture, music, and folklore, an expression of the people of Macerata Campania. It’s a term with a very rich history and tradition, relating to the celebration of a religious event: the Feast of Sant’Antuono (St. Anthony the Abbot).

The punnuk is a tugging ritual of the village folk from three communities in Hungduan, Ifugao in Northern Luzon, Philippines. It is performed at the confluence of Hapao River and a tributary as the final ritual after the rice harvest. Its consummation brings to a close an agricultural cycle and signals the beginning of a new one. \n\nThe punnuk is a ritual of pomp and revelry. Garbed in their predominantly red-col-ored attire of the Tuwali ethno-linguistic subgroup, the participants negotiate the terraced fields in a single file amidst lush greens under the blue skies. The tempo builds up as the participants reach the riverbank, each group positioned opposite the other. The excitement is sustained through the final tugging match, and the sinewy brawn of the participants is highlighted by the river’s rushing water.

Ethnobotany is an area of scientic studies investigating practical uses of indig-enous plants by people in a particular culture and region, which are inherited through traditional knowledge (www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/ethnobotany). The term was first conceived by John William Harshberger, but the area really became well known by Richard Evans Schultes beginning with his Amazon expedition (Balick 2012). The use of plants as food sources and medicines date back to origin of human life, although the type of uses was not sophisticated as the modern forms. Overtime it has evolved into many forms in diverse cultures by local peoples. Since the first uses, people have learned to identify and classify the plants and understand the features and roles of plants. All the priceless knowledge has improved the uses of plants, and the knowledge has passed on across generations in the local cultures, which makes usage of plants even more sophisticated.