Popularizing Korean Intangible Heritage Sites: Contextualizing the Politics

Like traditional music, ensuring the continued popularity of Korean indigenous intangible heritage sites have been recognized as an obligation of contemporary society. However, attention has been focused on the practical solutions without enough discussion around articulating what is meant by popularization. Questions such as ‘What is popularization?’, ‘What is the objective of the popularization’ and ‘What kind of popularization should be sought?’ must come before the question ‘How can popularization be implemented?’. To justify ‘popularization’, the moral preconditions to validate ‘the present’ must first be discussed. It can be argued that the popularization might be a verbalism without authenticity, in that there have been no discussions about moral precondition for popularization. This shows that ‘the present’ dominates and colonizes ‘the past’. There is a phenomenon or purpose for dominance order control consolidation in the folklore popularization discourses, concealing the existing contradictory conditions by means of this ‘ideological present’. ‘The present’ without reflexivity is the ideological space-time, in which ‘blind’ popularization without ethical contemplation can be claimed. This is the political context in the popularization discourses of intangible heritage including indigenous folk songs.