A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to vist Busan when the 48th Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee was taking place. As part of that, the Korea Heritage Service (KHS) operated K-Heritage House, a huge pavilion set up in one of BEXCO’s exhibition halls with booths for different heritage organisations and sites, digital heritage spaces, a Korea Intangible Cultural Heritage Performing Arts Market (KIPAM 2026), interactive spaces where you could watch intangible heritage masters and even have a hands-on experiences, and watch different intangible heritage performances.
K-Heritage House in itself was amazing – seeing performances, having a chance to speak to site custodians, researchers, and other knowledgeable staff - even using an on-site interpreter service for KIPAM, which allowed me (shamefully still a Korean language learner after 5 years) to talk to representatives from intangible heritage protection associations – something I have wanted to do for a long time. K-Heritage House was so good that my planned two-hour morning visit before I went to other Busan museums turned into a full day visit – and if I didn’t have to return to Daejeon that evening I would have visited the next day!! I am grateful to the KHS for an amazing experience and hope that because KIPAM was called KIPAM 2026 that a KIPAM 2027 (and another K-Heritage House) is forthcoming. PLEASE.
Modern inscriptions illustrate some of the best and worst of South Korea’s recent past. Three items relate to its difficult history – the post-war Jeju 4-3 uprising, and the April 19, 1960 and May 18, 1980 democracy movements. Other items document South Korea’s journey to heal and modernize. The KBS ‘Finding Dispersed Families’ entry is particularly poignant as it documents daily live broadcast efforts made in 1983 to reunite families separated since Japanese colonial rule. The remaining two entries document significant progress and have been used as good practice by other countries. The Korea Reforestation Archives document very successful public-private efforts to transform the severely depleted forest landscape whilst the Saemaul Undong archive shows endeavours to transform into a successful economy.
Ultimately, UNESCO’s Memory of the World creates public awareness of the importance of the materials it recognises and gives everyone the opportunity to learn more, no matter where they live and no matter which country they have an interest in. As for South Korea, I hope that there will be more opportunities to see items from all Memory of the World listings come together for future exhibitions to highlight key points throughout the country's journey rather than seeing each in isolation.
To find out more about each of South Korea’s Memory of the World listings, visit the Korea Uncovered UNESCO Memory of the World page.
That excitement aside, as part of the K-Heritage House offering was a UNESCO Memory of the World exhibition, and that had been my main reason for visiting. Memory of the World items are held at different locations throughout the country and it had not yet been possible for me to travel to all of them. I had hoped to see a few previously unseen items, but in fact all twenty of South Korea’s Memory of the World items were represented in the exhibition, providing the first opportunity, at least that I am aware of, to see everything in one location.
If you have never heard of UNESCO’s Memory of the World, it is a programme aimed at preserving and protecting the world’s important documentary heritage, including audiovisual materials. Currently there are 570 inscriptions but UNESCO does not hold any of these items, rather they are in the care of the organisations that request registration. South Korea has twenty Memory of the World listings, the first being registered in 1997 (the Annals of the Choson Dynasty and the Hunminjeongum Manuscript) and the last in 2025 (the Jeju 4-3 archives and the Korea Reforestation archives). The date range of these items spans several centuries, with two dating to the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392), eleven to the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897), one to the Korean Empire (1897-1910) and six are recent, ranging in date from 1948 to 1983.
The two items dating to the Goryeo Dynasty are the printing woodblocks of the Tripitaka Koreana, which were commissioned in 1236, and the Baegun hwasang chorok buljo jikji simche yojeol (volume II), an anthology of Zen Buddhist scriptures which were printed in 1377. The Tripitaka Koreana is a collection of Buddhist scriptures carved onto 81,258 wooden blocks that you can still see in the beautiful Janggyeong Panjeon at Haeinsa Temple in Hapcheon, which is also UNESCO protected, partly because of its distinct open-air architectural style that has preserved the woodblocks for hundreds of years.
Joseon Dynasty documentation ranges in date from 1392 to 1897 (1910 if including the Korean Empire), and includes Confucian printing woodblocks and the beautiful silver, gold and jade royal seals that represent the whole of the Joseon Dynasty period, as well as various royal records, a medical encyclopedia that was the best of its time, records of the Joseon Tongsinsa missions to Japan which includes paintings and calligraphy, the diary of the national hero Admiral Yi Sun-Sin, who led the Joseon navy to victory in the Imjin War (1592-1598) and the Hunminjeongum Manuscript (1446), which was written by King Sejong in order to explain the purpose and principles of Hangeul, the Korean alphabet that was of his creation.
My two favourite pieces from the Joseon Dynasty are Uigwe and a specific item from the Donghak Peasant Revolution archives. Uigwe survive from 1601 onwards, and these are books which set out royal protocols, but they include many visual aspects rather than just writing, so we can see for instance exactly where certain people stood during a ceremony, or a drawing of a fortress wall that would be or was being built, or images that were to be used in a funeral, or what people wore during certain rites. You can see Uigwe in many museums, but the lovely thing is that each relates to a specific event, so they all have different visual elements. The Donghak Peasant Revolution was a 1894-1895 uprising sparked by the need for social reforms and I was aware of something called a circular letter or a round robin that had been used at this time, but had never seen one, so was excited to see an example in the exhibition. A circular letter is simply a signed letter where the signatures are made in a circle, thus treating everyone equally and anonymizing leaders. It was fascinating to see up close, even more so because the letter displayed is thought to predate the beginnings of the revolt by only two months. The only entry relating specifically to the Korean Empire is the National Debt Redemption Movement archive, which documents the 1907-1910 public campaign to pay back a Japanese debt in an attempt to avoid colonization.
