Every year for the past thirty-nine years, Bali hosts the Bali Arts Festival (Pesta Kesenian Bali), a traditional performing arts celebration featuring artists from all over Indonesia. Starting from 10 June with a magnificent parade where all Balinese regencies are represented, the festival continues until 9 July with several daily performances, all open and free for the public. Held in Taman Budaya in Denpasar, the festival venue represents a beautiful ensemble of traditional architecture pavilions.\n\nMost participating performing groups come from Bali to demonstrate rare art forms from the distant parts of the island or compete in mostly popular genres, which include barong, legong, kecak, and various mask dances. Safeguarding these arts being the main objective of the festival, it has contemporary music, dance, and theatrical styles that reflect the motifs and patterns of traditional culture. Along with performing arts that are indisputably central to the festival, traditional Balinese foods and crafts, and even ways of conducting religious ceremonies are also showcased.\n\nThe Bali Arts Festival started in 1979 as a provincial initiative of Ida Bagus Mantra in response to rapid expansion of the tourism industry, attempting to prevent the extinction of traditional Balinese arts. It proved to be successful; and a series of various district and regency contests helped galvanize cultural life while dance and art schools were opened with government support. The festival remains mostly a local communal event allowing performers, artists, and craftsmen from different regencies to meet and occasionally compete with the support of the spectators from their own villages. Amidst the overwhelming growth of tourism industry in Bali, a condition that brings compounding threats to sustaining traditional cultural production, the presence of foreign tourists in the festival remains rather insignificant.\n\nPhoto : Traditional Balinese dancers preparing themselves for performance © Eva Rapoport

The Maranao are a southern Philippine ethno-linguistic group living along the fringes of Lake Lanao in the Lanao provinces of Mindanao. The Maranao are best known for their love of beauty as shown in their ukil art, poetry—the epic Darangen, inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List—and the torogan, the grandest type of Philippine architecture.

The lion dance is a performance art known throughout East Asia, in which practitioners wear lion masks. It is thought that the lion dance was introduced in Japan as a religious play together with Buddhism in the seventh century. The dance tells the story of a lion with magical powers that played a role in expelling evil from the path on which the spirits travel. Today, it is a much-loved performance used to celebrate auspicious occasions, to bring peace, happiness, health, and long life. It is also commonly performed in New Year celebra\u0002tions and festivals. Several entertaining performance groups traveled around performing the lion dance during the Edo period, which gave momentum to the spread of the dance all over the country. The dance is light and has strong recre\u0002ational characteristics including acrobatic elements.

Linguists predict that if nothing is done, then by the end of the twenty first century or shortly thereafter, 90 percent of the world languages will face extinction. This phenomenon has a direct impact on intangible cultural heritage in that such a loss may lead to all local wisdom and knowhow being lost. Linguists at Mahidol University have, therefore, established the Resource Center for Documentation and Revitalization of Endangered Languages and Cultures to preserve and revive Southeast Asian languages and cultures in crisis and on the verge of extinction. The center operates on the assumption that linguistic and cultural diversity are the heritage for all humankind and deserve to survive for future generations. The Center started operation on 29 July 2004 with the original mission to document and revitalize fifteen severely endangered languages of Thailand. Subsequently, the center’s operations were extended into other domains, both geographically and thematically. This has given rise to new developments in applied linguistics and new challenges in applying an interdisciplinary approach to documenting and revitalizing languages at various stages of crisis.

The circle dance, where people dance in a rotating formation, has appeared in many cultures since ancient times. The form and structure of the circle dance reflect the aesthetic concepts of mysteriousness, the incessant generation of filling and emptying, eternal return, unity, and defense. While there are various kinds of circle dance forms in Korea, the grandest one, with more than 250 dancers, is the yeowonmu.

The tug-of-war is one of the most well-known intangible cultural heritage elements that represent the Republic of Korea. Tug-of-war games were widely enjoyed by people across the country before the 1930s and 1940s. During the 1960s, the tug-of-war came under the protection of the Cultural Heritage Conservation Policy and has been appointed and is being managed by local and national governments. Locally, eight tug-of-war traditions have been inscribed on the national inventory list. Moreover, compared to other ICH element studies, of the element has been significantly researched.\n\nTug-of-war is a cultural heritage element of many East Asian nations, and these nations are preparing to nominate the element to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In this context, the goal of this paper is to discover universal traits in tug-of-war traditions in East Asia. However, besides the Republic of Korea and Japan, there is insufficient research on tug-of-war traditions in the region, which limits the scope of this presentation. In case of China, despite the existence of various records on tug-of-war in literature, the tradition as it exists in China today seems to be more of a sports match than a ritual event. I would also like to mention that this paper is a draft based on document records, the Internet, and the academic symposium hosted by Gijisi Tug-of-War Conservation Institute.

Bongsan Talchum, or the Bongsan mask-dance drama, was originally transmitted in Giryang-ri, Dongseon-myeon, Bongsan-gun, Hwanghae Province in the northern part of Korean Peninsula. However, with the relocation of administrative bodies, including the district office to Sariwon in 1915, the mask-dance drama and its transmission activities were also transferred to the area. In South Korea, Bongsan Talchum had been transmitted since its restoration by performers who originated from the North, including Jin-ok Kim and Cheon-sik Min, and was designated as Important Intangible Cultural Property No. 17 in 1967. The office of the Bongsan Mask Dance-Drama Preservation Society is currently housed within the Training Center for Important Intangible Cultural Properties in Seoul.

Ancient Koreans first adopted Chinese characters (hanja, 漢字) for widespread use in the middle of the 4th century, with the establishment of educational institutions and the import of Chinese books as textbooks. The Korean way of pronouncing Chinese characters was called dongeum (東音), and differentiated from the Chinese way. In 1443, Koreans created their own characters (hangeul). Since then, hangeul, Korean-Chinese words and Chinese characters have been used in combination.The mother tongue (vernacular) of Koreans from the ancient to the present has been part of the Altaic family. This mother tongue can be called the indigenous language (native Korean), distinct from Korean-Chinese (dongeum) words. Needless to say, Korean culture and indigenous language predate Korean-Chinese words. Thus, it is a meaningful task to seek the origins of intangible cultural heritage (hereinafter intangible heritage) in indigenous language.

Traditional music: the soul of the universe! Traditional music: the unspoken language!\n\nAll around the world music plays an important role in communicating human expressions and emotions. Besides being an artistic and creative form of expression, music is associated with festivity—the celebrations of new beginnings, birth, initiation, courtship, marriage, and death. Music, with or without instruments, is an integral part of traditional occupations and daily chores, such as planting, harvesting, and processing food, herding, fishing, and craft making, such as carpentry, pottery, and basketry. \n\nMusic communicates meaning during rituals and rites and is often used as a tool for meditation. With or without song, the sounds of flutes, drum, trumpets, gongs, bagpipes, and others can evoke memories and transport people to places of happiness, peace, hope, nostalgia, and melancholy. As Plato, the philosopher said, “music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” The ability to sing and create music is a gift bestowed on a person regardless of his or her social status. Regardless of its source, music can be embraced by people of all walks of life and is an intrinsic part of cultural heritage

One phenomenon that distinguishes humans from other animals is the use of music and language. Musical instruments are a major tool in making music, which is sound organized by humans. In many regions, music, singing, and dancing are used interchangeably, and musical instruments and music are inextricably closely related. The word Ngoma in Africa is the name of a drum, but it is a comprehensive term that includes all the music, songs, and dances played by the drum and has the meaning of ritual ceremonies.\n\nMusical instruments have been with humankind since the Paleolithic era. Musical instruments are among the oldest and most widespread objects made by humans. Humans began making musical instruments to imitate the sounds of nature such as wind, rain, thunder, and the sound of birds singing as well as the howling of animals. Such a tradition of using nature sound continues to this day. We can see wind chimes that dangle by the wind in Buddhist temples throughout Asia; wind bamboo tubes in Bali of Indonesia; Đan Nu’o’c, created by Sedang people in Vietnam, which is a clicking bamboo musical instrument using water; and Suikinkutsu using a bamboo tube and water pot in Japanese gardens. Since the Neolithic era, people soothed the hardships of labor with songs, learning the power of the rhythm by pounding a pestle in a mortar. Humans began to think about transcendental beings and had ritual ceremonies, and they tried to impress their existence by using music and musical instruments.

Trần Thương Temple Festival in Nhân Đạo Commune, Lý Nhân District, Hà Nam Province\nTrần Thương temple - one of the three largest and holiest temples in the Red River delta is dedicated to worship Trần Quốc Tuấn or Trần Hưng Đạo, a supreme commander of Viet Nam during the Trần dynasty and his army to defeat the Mongolian – Yuan invaders in the 13th century.\n

1. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF INTANGIBLE HERITAGE \n\nInterest in intangible heritage has been growing exponentially both in Korea and around the world recently. The focus on tangible culture in the past had been like viewing the world with just one eye. The expansion of demand for intangible cultural products and accumulated challenges speak for the urgency in developing professionals in related fields. The study of intangible heritage connects to the core values of the entire cultural heritage field, like a compass for navigating the ocean. While tangible heritage took place in the past tense, intangible heritage is taking place now, in the present tense. The driving force that created some of the world’s most prestigious products and brands also lies in the realm of intangible heritage. Unlike tangible heritage, intangible heritage is a part of history that continues to live in the present, as long as its transmission continues. Handicraft technologies make up an important part of heritage in Korea, with majority of artifacts in museums being handicraft items. I believe the same applies to other countries as well. However, the study of handicraft technologies in intangible heritage studies has been limited so far. \n\n2. PROCESS OF ESTABLISHMENT AND OBJECTIVES \n\n The Dept. of Intangible Cultural Heritage Studies at our university was established in March 2017. Tangible heritage is the focus of majority of the 6 majors at our university, established by the Cultural Heritage Administration as a special purpose university. Only the curriculum of the Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage Studies is focused on handicraft technologies. There hasn’t been a department in any Korean university dedicated to the study of handicraft technologies. Even with the history of intangible heritage policy in Korea reaching 60 years, even with the establishment of the National Intangible Heritage Center, we have failed to produce skilled professionals in the field. There is a pressing need to train people for the field. As the nation’s only department of intangible cultural heritage studies, we aim to fulfill this historical mission. \n\n3. COMPOSITION OF THE CURRICULUM \n\nThe curriculum has been organized into three organically interconnected tracks- academic research, policy research and cultural planning, corresponding to demand in the field of intangible heritage. Undergraduate students are required to take 140 credits to graduates, with 72 credits in their major, 32 liberal arts credits and 68 field practice credits. This includes the basic and shared courses of “Intangible Cultural Heritage in the World”, “History of Korean Art 1 & 2”, “History of Traditional Lifestyle and"