Research at the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage of Korea

　Based on the agreement for research exchange between Japan and Korea on the conservation of intangible cultural heritage, which was signed last June with the Folkloric Studies Division of the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage of Korea, Hyoki Satoru of the Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage researched visual documents of intangible cultural heritage in South Korea for two weeks in October 2008. The purpose was to investigate the current condition of such visual documents and apply the results of this research to the management and utilization of similar documents in Japan. In South Korea, the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage actively creates visual documents of intangible cultural heritage and manages them in cooperation with various organizations including the National Archives of Korea and the Korean Film Archive. There are many points to be learned from this organizational management system. For example, the active use of visual documents made by the Institute in television broadcasting was quite impressive. The Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage is now creating a database of locations of visual documents on Japanese intangible cultural heritage and would like to consider sharing information with Korea.