In the days before modern medicine, severe illnesses were thought to be the mischief of spirits. Thus, the best way to cure a disease was to exorcise the disease-causing spirit through a byeonggut (shamanistic healing ritual). This ritual went by different names according to the region. In Hwanghae Province, it was known as the toesong-gut or hajik-gut; in Seoul and the Gyeonggi Province region, it was called chibyeong-gut; and in the Chungcheong region, it was known as the judangpuri-gut.

Coming from a formerly colonized and currently developing country like the Philippines, advancing cultural heritage education becomes imperative. Cultural heritage education potentially stems the negative impact of globalization on culture. It can also dismantle the framework of neocolonialism in formerly colonized states whose educational systems were established by colonizers. While these promises of what cultural heritage education can do are easily identified, crafting a higher education degree program in cultural heritage, especially intangible cultural heritage, has many ramifications. This paper problematizes the challenges in the development and institution of a higher education degree program in intangible cultural heritage. Specifically this paper will attempt to raise and discuss issues that (may) surface in the development and institution a higher education degree program in intangible cultural heritage in the light of current higher education systems, practices and processes using primarily the context of the Philippines as a developing country. National higher education policies, program structure and content, pedagogy as well resources for teaching, and career prospects and employability are the areas which shall be problematized in this discussion. While the discussion is primarily on the context of the Philippines, the discussion can possibly have reverberations in developing countries.

Facing the rising sun, Va Temple in Van Gia Village, Trung Hung Ward, Hanoi, is also known as the East Palace, marking its importance as one of the four major veneration sites of the Tan Vien Mountain God, a key figure of Vietnamese spiritual tradition. According to legend the site’s tutelary divinity is the Ancestral Deity of the Southern Heavens and God of the Tan Vien Mountain, one the country’s most ancient deities and one of the principal mountain gods. As such, the Tan Vien Mountain God is venerated throughout the northern plain region of Vietnam by the Viet people and by some of the country’s ethnic minorities as well.