A Study on Policy Background of Cultural Conflict between Korea and China Caused by Registration of Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

Korean famous folk songs \textlessArirang\textgreater and traditional narrative songs \textlessPansori\textgreater have been designated in Chinese intangible cultural assets. Korea and China have been conflicting on listing cultural assets recently including those Korean songs. This caused cultural conflict not only because Chinese government tried to list Korean heritage on their assets, but they wanted to register Korean cultural heritage as their own assets on UNESCO. The purpose of this article is to examine the reason why cultural conflicts between Korea and China have happened and how to solve this problem.First, the writer researched the policies relevant to Chinese intangible property in order to find the reason why China wants to extend their heritage. In particularly, the culture of the minority races in China was examined to find out how China was able to incorporate Korean culture as their culture. On top of that, the writer considered ethnic Korean living in China that has cultural common aspects with Korean among the minorities as a key to the conflicts and examined how the ethnic Korean identity effects on the cultural conflicts between two countries.Moreover, in order to show the solution to the conflicts, the writer figured out the limitation of Cultural Properties Protection Law by studying the law critically. The finding is that the current law only protects Korean intangible assets to keep in present state. However, the law needs broader concept of protection which includes accession meaning and a policy of collaborative register presented by UNESCO which leads to fundamental solutions. The policy that is able to protect Korean intangible heritage would be an important agenda in today’s Global era.