National Intangible Cultural Property as Local Community Heritage - With a Focus on Gyeongsanjain Dano Festival -

This study is interested in how national intangible cultural properties functioning as local festivals are structured by the state’s intangible cultural properties policy. By reviewing the process of selection and exclusion of cultural factors that may occur during policy enforcement, this study will attend to how the impact of the policy is embodied at the site for passing down intangible heritage. The problem the author wants to raise is that the categories of national intangible cultural assets are concentrated on extremely intangible techniques and entertainment, so a policy environment suitable for events that have sufficient value for community heritage is not easily created.Here, the policy implications were derived by identifying and examining the gap between the policy and the inheritance site through the case of the Gyeongsanjain Dano Festival, for which the national intangible cultural property policy has existed for 50 years. The policy implications can be summarized into two main points, as follows:First, after being designated as an Important Intangible Cultural Property in 1971, the Gyeongsanjain Dano Festival, which has been passed down through the history of intangible cultural asset policies, is an intangible cultural asset that has a complex and comprehensive nature that cannot be classified into a single category, such as a traditional festival, a folk belief, a traditional performance, or a work of art. Nevertheless, based on the policy of intangible cultural properties, it was defined as a play and a ritual before the Intangible Cultural Properties Law and as a traditional festival afterward. This example can lead to productive discussions because it reveals the limitations of the current single category system of national intangible cultural assets.Second, cultural factors selected and excluded in the process of producing intangible cultural property can be identified. Under the Cultural Heritage Protection Law, intangible cultural properties centered on performances were selected as a result of the emphasis on protecting cultural transmitters of specific techniques and entertainment. As cultural factors excluded from this process, the focus of this study is the five shrines and rituals of Hanjanggun distributed across the old Jain village. Although there was a ritual to honor the same divinity as Hanjanggun, results show that there some aspects were enshrined in the National Intangible Cultural Heritage and others were not. In addition, the fact that the rituals for Hanjanggun are divided into rituals for performances, such as the “Four Handang Announcement System,” and rituals that are actually handed down, has great implications from a policy point of view.