"1. Introduction: Safeguarding ICH through a Designation System\nSimilar to other countries, the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) of Korea, which embodies Korean cultural identity, is now facing the threat of transformation and disappearance as a result of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation over the last several decades. In light of this threat, Korea enacted institutional safeguarding measures for intangible cultural heritage beginning with the establishment of the Cultural Properties Protection Act in 1962. \nThe Cultural Properties Protection Act defines ICH as cultural manifestations of intangible nature with high historical and artistic significance, such as theatrical and musical performing arts as well as crafts and skills. The act, furthermore, distinguishes ICH into two different groups: Important Intangible Cultural Property, designated by the state, and Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage, designated by local or regional governments. The number of items listed as Important Intangible Cultural Properties was 7 in 1964, and by 2011, this amount expanded to 114, and the number of Provincial Intangible Cultural Properties is 446. \nThe overriding principle for all activities involved in protecting and managing cultural properties and reviving them as living culture is preserving these heritage elements in their original forms. \nHowever, in the case of ICH, due to their very nature of existing and being transmitted orally, they are especially vulnerable and endangered in today’s quickly evolving, industrialised and urbanised society. Ensuring their continuity over time is accordingly more challenging and requires active intervention. \nTherefore, state and local governments select and designate categories of ICH more severely threatened than others by the changing environment, and provide support for transmission activities by Holders and transmitters of skills and the arts to guarantee the continuity of traditions and the cultural identity of the nation. "

Storytelling is an important aspect of the human experience. Through stories, we learn, we share, we feel, we express, and we remember. And in the Pacific, stories serve as the thread that connects us with our places. Our stories hold lessons of the strength, struggles, and solidarity that shape the identity all Pacific Islanders, as well as the accumulated knowledge, world views, and ways of knowing developed through firsthand engagement with our environment. However, while critical to survival in our places, our stories and the knowledge held in them are not always valued in school. This leaves a gap in education that alienates communities from classrooms and young learners from the collective wisdom that would guide them into a thriving future.

Some say that one of the new paradigms representing 21st century is ecology. In a situation where nature is being rapidly polluted and destroyed, humans are just beings that interact with nature as part of the ecosystem. For all of us who are preparing for the post-corona era, the ecological crisis, which can be called as the crisis of humanity, has become a daily life. Current infectious diseases that have invaded human life are not irrelevant to the disturbance of natural ecosystems caused by climate change and environmental destruction. Changes in the natural environment have a great influence on the function of the ecosystem and the livelihood of mankind, and considering the biodiversity of the planet, there is a great deal of direct and indirect implications for the living creatures.

The Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies (IPNGS) was established under the Cultural Development Act, passed by the Papua New Guinea House of Assembly on 14 October 1974. Papua New Guinea had become self-governing from Australia almost a year earlier, but independence was still about another year in the future. Today IPNGS is a national cultural institution under the National Cultural Commission Act. It moved to its present location towards the end of 1976. The distinctive welded sculptures on the outside walls and gates depict the Orokolo story of Aru Aru and his journey to the moon, as told by Sir Albert Maori Kiki.

According to UNESCO’s Culture Urban Future: Global Report on Culture for Sustainable Development (Paris 2016), over half of the world’s population is now living in urban areas. Because of the heterogeneous background of these city populations, superdiversity has become a permanent feature not just of conurbations such as Singapore, Bangkok, and Mumbai. Also Europe is struggling with this challenge, which might create tensions and conflicts and the emergence of old and new cultural practices, reflecting new social identities and shared social spaces (Vertovec, 141). The Dutch city of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, harbors immigrants with at least 160 different ethnic backgrounds, everyone bringing along his or her own intangible cultural heritage. What is intangible heritage in such an ethnically divided society? There is evidence that in such a superdiverse context, ICH can contribute to community building and more generally to sustainable development.

The rapid processes of globalization and mass culture have increased interest among the Kyrgyz people regarding traditional culture for the preservation of historical memory and ethno-cultural identity. In this, the role of UNESCO is remarkable, one which promotes the preservation, development, and dissemination of national culture as well as contributes to transmitting culture and ensures its continuity over time.

Peganum harmala L. belongs to the plant family Zygophyllaceae and appears spontaneously in the wide arid and semiarid areas between Western China and the Middle East/North Africa region. It is also istributed in Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Caucasus. P. harmala is a perennial glabrous herb that reaches thirty to one hundred centimeters in height with a short creeping rooting system, white flowers, and three-chamber capsule-type fruits that can contain about fifty black seeds. The roots can reach a depth of five or six meters to adapt to drying soils. The plant tends not to suffer from grazing due to its bitter taste (alkaloid content).

Discourse about intangible cultural heritage is anchored on the question of memory, which has become a topic of great interest today not only within academia but also in popular culture. America’s newfound taste for cupcakes and macaroni and cheese, for instance, is not so much about society’s gastronomic craving for these foods, as it is about society’s craving for history and the comfort of things past. In essence, it is about restorative nostalgia and the memories that these foods evoke and make possible through the imaginary. Our preoccupation with memory and remembering, in large part, is driven by our recognition of the fragility of memory, a fragility that is underscored by this age of mass displacement in which we live. As the Iranian American writer Roya Hakakian notes in her recent memoir, “When you have been a refugee, abandoned all your loves and belongings, your memories become your belongings.” In a world where over 80 million people are currently forcibly displaced, amounting to one person being forcibly dislodged from his or her home and lifeways approximately every two seconds, dislocation, uprooting, and rupture are as much a facet of our lived experience as are connectivity and interdependence. Exilic condition is an unfortunate but undeniable feature of modernity.\nEven within living memory, Asia has had her share of tumultuous histories. Colonization, conflict, war, and other calamities have engendered mass dispersal. Over 2 million Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians fled their homelands in the aftermath of war, revolution and genocide, and many more Southeast Asians continue to be displaced in varied contexts and conditions as we speak. The genocide in Cambodia left deep wounds and ravaging effects on the cultural memories of the nation that is now bifurcated between Asia and the diaspora. Even without the trauma of war and mass atrocities, globalization, modernization, and urbanization have progressively divested traditional knowledge of its merits, and peripheralized certain memories into oblivion.

Cambodian Living Arts’ (CLA) mission is to be a catalyst in a vibrant arts sector, inspiring new generations. Established in 1998, the organization’s original goal was to keep Cambodia’s endangered intangible heritage alive. As the context of Cambodia changed, and a new generation of artists began to emerge, CLA started offering scholarships, fellowships and professional development training, whilst creating job opportunities and encouraging cultural entrepreneurship. To support the transforming environment, CLA also engaged in cultural policy advocacy, supported the development of arts education in public schools and built new audiences for arts. CLA’s programs aim to give artists the resources and opportunities to start telling stories of contemporary Cambodia. Cambodian Living Arts believes that arts are at the heart of a vital society and supports cultural participation for all.

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.

The primary value of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) lies in its ability to create locally based knowledge that performers, practitioners, and other participants use to contemplate, understand, and act upon their lives. Its scope is utilitarian as well as spiritual, ethical as well as aesthetic. Through ICH, local participants realise a wide range of benefits—ranging from practical techniques to affirmations of individual identity and group solidarity. National cultural institutions that programmatically recognise this value develop policy both to help safeguard local ICH and to promote cultural diversity, an ethical and political principle that recognises the creativity, beauty, wisdom, and legitimacy of the variety of human cultures. Cultural diversity at a national level can help safeguard local practices of ICH.

"For the past three years, sub-regional network meetings on safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH) in the Asia-Pacific region have been held consecutively in Nandi (Fiji, 2010), Nukualofa (Tonga, 2011), and Rarotonga (Cook Islands, 2012). Through these meetings, the countries in the Pacific region and ICHCAP have recognised the importance of safeguarding ICH as the origin of human creativity and cultural diversity and have shared the need for regional and international cooperation. In particular, the third sub-regional meeting in Rarotonga offers an opportunity to discuss the possibility of using information and communication technology (ICT) to efficiently manage and use ICH information. \nAlbeit with some negative aspects, the so-called information society, established by the development of ICT, is causing remarkable changes such as rapid dissemination of knowledge and information, promotion of communication, and improvement in the quality of life. In particular, the Internet is changing the concept of traditional information service and it is making a new environment. The possibility of networking, cooperation, and digitisation that is raised in this environment brings the fundamental change in the function of acquisition, storage, and dissemination of information.\nICT development also offers a new method in the ICH field. In other words, by using the constantly progressing ICT properly for safeguarding and promoting ICH, it is expected to contribute to establishing a new safeguarding system, fundamentally different from traditional systems. The application of ICT will help people easily access ICH information and knowledge and it will also contribute to enhancing ICH safeguarding and cultural diversity. "