Study of Intangible Cultural Heritage Community through Social Network Analysis – Focused on the Item of Pansori

Intangible cultural heritage is passed down through people s mouth and act without a separate means. Accordingly, a direct face-to-face meeting is needed in order to teach and learn that. People enter into human relations in the process of meeting and form groups sharing a particular intellectual propensity. Thus, in order to understand the intangible cultural heritage properly, it is necessary to understand the relational characteristics of the groups as well as individual properties of the intangible cultural heritage. The UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage specified that the participation of community and group is essential for the protection of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity and emphasized the importance of the community. Nevertheless, there are insufficient preceding studies related to this. Thus, this study examined the structures and characteristics of intangible cultural heritage community, focusing on the case of the item of Pansori through a social network analysis.First, this study assessed 303 persons who have been in the teacher-pupil relationships with 42 holders and transmission teaching assistants in the item of Pansori since 1964 till the present. In addition, by investigating the types of their relationships, this study constructed and analyzed link data and connection network. As a result of the analysis, first, it turned out that the number of links in which 303 Pansori transmitters have entered into the master-apprentice and colleague relationships was 2,918, and the groups had high cohesion. Second, as main figures in the Pansori community connection network, Sook-seon Ahn was newly found, in addition to Chang-soon Seong and So-hee Kim. This is a result different from the main figures in modern Pansori, previously known, including Rok-ju Park, Cho-weol Park, So-hee Kim and Yeo-ran Kim, etc. Third, there was higher cohesion in the later groups than in those of people who had been active prior to the establishment of a system for intangible cultural assets in the 1960s, and centering around human cultural assets, big and small groups with strong solidarity had been formed.This study is research that examined the structures and characteristics of an intangible cultural heritage community, focusing on the case of the item of Pansori through a social network analysis. This study has a significance that, investigating the intangible cultural heritage community through the method of social network analysis, it proposed quantitative and objective research methods, breaking away from the way of understanding the types of relationships depending on a small number of people s oral statement.