Folk Culture between Cultural Property and Tourism Gangneung Dano Festival Appropriated

Scholarly attention in the field of korean folklore studies conventionally has been given to digging out the survivals, considered as fixed and unchanged elements of the national culture. In this perspective is represented folk in local region as mere survival or revival of national tradition and people as mere passive keeper of it. The purpose of this paper is to deconstruct the basic perspectives and concepts of those ‘salvage-folklore’. I have tried to investigate in this paper, specifically ‘Gangneung Dano Festival’, revaluated the oldest and the greatest local festival in Korea, with the historical process that was invented and evolved from local into national, still more into international festival. This paper unfold in three phases. First, I have reconstructed the shape of Dano-folk in Gangneung before that was designated as an important intangible cultural property, in 1967. Especially, I inquired into ‘Danyang athletic meet’, ‘Danyang play’, held since the colonial period but unnoticed, how they were related to the establishment of ‘Gangneung Dano Festival’. Secondly, I have considered the basic elements of the festival, with the concrete course of recreation and reinvention of them, while the festival was reborn as national cultural asset. And then, ‘Millenary Danoje’, the discourse of “long history”, I have examined how was objectified and diverted in present context of international tourism, as for the revitalization of local economy.