Cheoyongmu is a traditional Korean dance per formed by five masked dancers, each dressed in a robe of a different color. The five colors —blue, red, yellow, black, and white—define and express the character of the dance as they represent the ohaeng (五行) ideology of Korean tradition.

In the traditional society, on New Year’s Eve, the day before January 1st of the lunar calendar, the civilians and the royal court held a Narye ceremony to welcome the new year. Narye is an event to drive out the evil spirits of last year and pray for peace. In the private sector, green bamboos with nodes were burnt to make explosive sounds in order to frighten the evil spirits way from the house. Even in the royal court of the Joseon Dynasty, they wore a naryero mask and walked around the palace playing jegeum(Korean cymbals) and drums. This ceremony is the Cheoyongmu (meaning Dance of Cheoyong), a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.\n\nCheoyongmu is based on the Cheoyong tale. Records related to Cheoyong can be found in Samguk Yusa, the historical book. According to records, Cheoyong was a person during the reign of King Heongang of Unified Silla. Cheoyong discovers that while he was away from home, the spirit of plague comes and secretly slept with his wife. However, Cheoyong sang and danced and withdrew, and the spirit who repented of his mistake by Cheoyong’s attitude vowed not to appear before him again. Afterwards, in private houses, the image of Cheoyong was attached to the gate to ward off the bad spirits, and Cheoyong took on the meaning of driving out evil spirits and welcoming auspicious events.\n\nBecause of this story, Cheoyongmu was an indispensable dance in the royal court narye. The current Cheoyongmu was prepared during the Joseon Dynasty and is performed by five male dancers. The dancers wear blue, white, red, black, and yellow robes and a Cheoyong mask decorated with tin earrings, peonies, and peach fruits on red skin. All of these decorative elements of the masks symbolize as the amulets of warding off the bad spirit and welcoming the auspicious events. Cheoyongmu has its origins in the aforementioned period of King Heongang of Unified Silla, and has been transmitted to this day. As the historical origin is long, it has rich artistry and value, and in recognition of this, it was registered as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.\n\nCheoyongmu has freely crossed between the civilian and the royal courts, spreading through in various forms such as dance, writing, and oral tradition, resulting in many changes and developments. Today, Cheoyong is recreated and enjoyed as a “living heritage” with various popular cultural contents such as creative dance, animation, and drama, and Cheoyong’s long vitality and symbolism are noteworthy. The reason is that court dance which had strict content and form and was an art for the few, is passively reproduced and slowly approaching the public as opposed to folk dances combined with various media and styles in modern society.\n\nIn the past, before the development of science and medicine, in traditional societies that were vulnerable to natural disasters and diseases, amuletic events such as Cheoyongmu were held to prevent diseases and bad luck in the New Year. In modern society, amuletic rites are no longer held at the national and private level, but people today are living with the rites of passage for the new year, such as eating red bean porridge or ringing of the Bosingak bell. The new year is a time when hope and anxiety for the future intersect. Even if the way of living in the past and the present changes and the form and method of spending the old year and welcoming the new year are different, wishing for good luck will be the wind that runs through the century. I conclude this article with a speculation that these winds may be bringing life to the 21st century Cheoyong.\n\nphoto : Cheoyongmu © Taewook Kim

According to CIOFF policy, an international folklore festival will be fully accomplished as a meeting place for cultures when it is organized in the spirit of friendship and promoting a culture of peace. ICH is an excellent culture inherited over generations, a source of cultural development, and a manifestation of cultural diversity. The new management mechanism realizes the integration of ICH and tourism. The launch of “One Belt and One Road” strategy actually provides an important strategic opportunity for the protection and development of ICH. At the beginning of a new civilization cycle, to open a new window of civilization with people of the world. While there are four main cradles of civilization, which, moving from East to West, are China, India, the Fertile Crescent, and the Mediterranean, specially Greece and Italy, India deserves a larger share of credit because it has deeply affected the cultural life of most of Asia. India has also extended her influence, directly and indirectly, to other parts of the world.\n\nAn International Folklore Festival is one of the means to safeguard, to promote and to diffuse ICH, mainly through such genres of expressions as music, dance, games, rituals, customs, know-how of handicraft and other arts. To be a significant contribution to the maintenance and enhancement of cultural identity and diversity, a folklore festival has to be implemented in an appropriate cultural context. The reflections presented aim to develop a pertinent cultural context in existing and in new international folklore festivals. The following items constitute and describe what CIOFF sees as important elements of the term cultural context.

First, What areas are included in East Asia? This article deals with East Asian printing technology so it is necessary to give a thought on the area where printing technoloy was developed in pre-modern times. Even though there are differences depending on the order of time, countries where printing technology has developed are China and its neighboring countries such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Therefore, this article aims to look into characteristics in these countries, grouping them into East Asia category.\nSecond, what is the scope of printing technology? Printing is the technology for mass copy of texts. Human civilization of copying texts has evolved from oral transmission to transcription, from transcription to printing, from printing to digital copying. It has been only thousand years since printing began to be used in human society in earnest. Social needs drove a development of new technology, and craftsmen who has assimilated its knowledge and skills created new things. In other words, intangible needs and technology produced new tangible things. Diagraming of printing technology is as follows;\nSocial needs for printing → Craftsman and Technology → Woodblock or Movable - Type → Books\nIn this article, we will examine why printing technique was needed and what its social background in each area was, focusing on woodblocks and movable-type, two representative methods of printing technology in pre modern times.\n

In Yiwangga-akgi (李王家樂器, Yi Royal Family’s Instruments) complied by the Royal Music Institute in 1939, there are sixty-six different types of instruments. These instruments are classified into three categories according to the genre of music played: a-ak (雅樂, ritual music), dang-ak (secular music of Chinese origin) and hyang-ak (indigenous music). A-ak and the musical instruments were regarded as significant since they represented Sung-Confucianism, which emphasized specific yue (rites) and ak (music), bringing order and harmony among its people with music and etiquette.

A shaman, known as a jhankri or dhami in Nepal, is a part of a unique tradition that is based on spiritual belief. Nepalese society, with its deep-rooted religious faith in supernatural powers, still believes that miseries, illnesses, and bad luck are caused by evil powers and that these ill effects and consequences of evil can be removed or treated by evoking divine power. It is believed that a properly trained jhankri is gifted with the ability to gain intimate knowledge of supernatural beings—their whereabouts, desires, dislikes, and requirements—and drawing out their divine spirit to remove evil and thus cure the inflicted.

The UNESCO 2003 Convention was adopted because of the need for safeguarding ICH and ensuring its safe transmission to future generations. While promotional activities allow increasing awareness about ICH among populations, formal and non-formal education ensures its sustainability as well as continuity. It is for this specific reason that the delivery of ICH-related knowledge and skills through formal and nonformal education plays one of the central roles in safeguarding efforts.

This paper is based on two phases of my work focusing on South Asian context:\n\n(i) my experience of designing an integrated heritage management programme and running it for the past five years, in which Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) has been a core concept; and\n(ii) my personal interest in rethinking the overall idea of education in general, and refining professional education for the heritage sector in particular.\n\nBoth of the above aspects have emerged from my engagement and exposure to the overall heritage scenario in South Asian contexts, hence this paper is a reflection on ICH pedagogy at least for the South Asian context. The paper explores the idea of ‘contextual learning’ as a feasible pedagogy that could be adopted in ICH education at two levels: first is to create professionals for safeguarding of ICH, and the second is to integrate ICH as resources both in early (child) education as well as professional education in general.

This networking program is based on experiences and achievements obtained from the collaborative work of UNESCO-ICHCAP in the living heritage field in Central Asia over the last decade.\n\nFor reference, the networking program comes on the heels of a three-party MoU signed by ICHCAP and organizations in Uzbekistan in 2019 and was followed by a Central Asia network meeting in Kazakhstan in 2019. In 2020, ICHCAP in cooperation with International Institute for Central Asian Studies (IICAS), conducted a survey project about ICH festivals along the Silk Roads, particularly with countries along the steppe route. Regarding the survey result, ICHCAP, IICAS and Korea-Central Asia Cooperation Forum Secretariat of the Korea Foundation (KF) held an online webinar and a strategic meeting to consider the need for realizing the multilateral values of Silk Roads-related cooperation

By applying an evidence-based approach, this paper seeks to share the case of the multinational inscription of Ong Chun Ceremony nominated by China and Malaysia through a fourfold “storyline” to sketch out how the joint action was initiated, developed, and finalized from the pre- to the post-nomination phases. It tries to provide a reflective narrative-interpretation of the community-driven nomination on vision, methodology, and pathway that helped to conceive targeted goals for sustainable effectiveness of joint safeguarding of ICH, including recent community interaction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside a discussion on the way forward to synergistic cooperation across the East Asian sub-region.

Bangladesh is rich in intangible cultural heritage in all the five domains outlined in the 2003 ICH Convention namely oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, and festive events, knowledge about nature and the universe and traditional craftmanship.Four elements are inscribed in the UNESCO representative list and two applications are submitted in 2019. The Ministry of Cultural Affairs has a list with literature of 54 elementsunder the 5 ICH domains, while researchers identified 123 elements. Comprehensive inventorying of living heritages is under process with the Government. Bangladesh, by ratifying 2003 Convention, assumes its obligation of safeguarding these elements of ICH. Among the elements, some are sustainable for the economic output of the objects associated with the elements. Others remain vulnerable for change in lifestyle, knowledge pattern, social and economic advancement, science and technology. Require safeguardfor sustainable development that includes transmission of the ICH elements for generations.

The major veins of definitions regarding shamanism in Japanese academic discourse can be summarized as follows. The shaman is an individual with the magico-religious professional capacity to directly engage with spiritual being while under an altered state of consciousness (trance) to fulfill various roles and functions such prophecy, oracle, divination, performance of rituals and healing. Shamanism is a magico-religious phenomenon constructed of a supernatural worldview, rites, clients and followers centered around the shaman. It is believed to have existed in continuity from the prehistoric era to the present day (Sato, 2010). Buddhist monks, Catholic priests and Protestant pastors belong to the priest category of religious actors who offer prayer and conduct rituals on behalf of individuals or the society directed at spiritual beings in a unidirectional relationship and under a normal state of consciousness. On the other hand, Shamans are religious actors who perform various roles in direct interaction with spiritual beings.