Over the past ten-odd years, the folklore section of the national heritage institute under the History Faculty of Kim Il Sung University has had 14 items put on the national intangible cultural heritage list.
Researcher Jo Jong Won was awarded a special diploma at the intangible cultural heritage exhibition-2025 in recognition of his distinguished role in discovering and verifying eight outstanding ICH items including the Korean greeting etiquette.
Asked what made him take up the work, Jo said that through the research activities he came to realize that the work to register ICH items is a patriotic undertaking for preserving and glorifying the national history and traditions, beyond protecting the heritage created by the ancestors.
The ICH registration work involves time-consuming tasks of tracing the origin of relevant cultural heritage, defining its concept and verifying it in an academic way.
When Jo started out, ICH was drawing little interest among the people as it is intangible. However, it was something important to protect and develop the excellent culture and traditions of the nation and so it must be done.
Jo and his colleagues made painstaking efforts to collect old documents and historical records, and toured around the country to have a better understanding of the relevant data. In the course of this, they discovered and collected such national ICH items as the greeting etiquette, customs of marriage, underfloor heating and moving into a new house, and sleighing as a folk game.
Yon Ok
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