Cultural Heritage Process of North Korean Traditional Culture and Changes in Everyday Life: Designation of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Traditional Holidays, Korean Costume, and National Food and Changes in the People’s Living Culture

The designation and promotion of intangible cultural heritage is one of the most active areas of North Korea’s cultural heritage-related policies. North Korea’s intangible cultural heritage policy can be said to be an extension of the Korean nationalism that has continued since the late 1980s, a part of the Kim Jong-un regime’s cultural policy that shows North Korea as a normal nation. Among them, traditional holidays, Korean costume, and national food not only occupy a significant portion of the intangible cultural heritage, but are also closely related to the living culture of the ordinary people. However, the people’s practice of carrying out it is not limited to passive actions based on a sense of political duty, but is changing in various forms. In particular, in the case of traditional holidays, the phenomenon of marketization accelerated after the ‘arduous march’ and the existing cultural inertia that does not match socialist lifestyle is appearing in various ways. In that sense, the North Korean people are accepting or adjusting authoritative discourses such as nationalism and immaterial cultural heritage system in their own way of life through leisure on holidays, consumption of food and clothes, and the practice of ancestral rites.