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ABSTRACT
North Korea has recently changed its domestic legislation relating to cultural and natural heritage and has actively participated in relevant UNESCO conventions and programmes. Early North Korean heritage law in the 1990s focused on tangible cultural heritage only. However, since Kim Jong-un took power in 2012, it began to evolve to include intangible cultural heritage and natural heritage, accommodating relevant provisions of UNESCO conventions and programmes. This series of legal changes in the field of heritage under Kim Jong-un’s regime represents a significant attitudinal shift on the part of North Korea toward the international community. It reflects the regime’s strong will to join international conventions and programmes in a pragmatic manner, particularly in relation to tourism promotion utilizing UNESCO’s name. This paper analyses, in detail, the specific changes to provisions per heritage category, together with North Korea’s relevant activities. The implication of these changes to North Korean heritage law and policy leads to the expectation that the current tendency to seek out and value UNESCO designations will continue in the Kim Jong-un’s regime and the international cooperation of North Korea in the field will increase as well.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Heritage in North Korea includes both movable and immovable, tangible and intangible, and cultural and natural heritage, which came to coincide with the definition of each category of heritage under UNESCO conventions on World Heritage, Intangible Cultural Heritage, and others, to be explained in further detail in this article.
2. Heritage under dictatorship takes on different roles than in other political systems, as shown by various authoritarian or communist regimes (Sørensen Citation2020, xvi). For example, during the dictatorial regime of General Francisco Franco (1957–1969) in Spain, a state-driven heritage industry was used as a vehicle for achieving both ideological and economic effects while serving the regime’s interest in securing the country’s territorial and cultural unity (Afinoguénova Citation2010). This is mainly due to the fact that heritage representing memories of the past can be used to legitimise claims of states to project new national ideas, as Smith (Citation1991) argued with regard to common historical memories as fundamental features of national identity. The background of establishment of heritage law and policy can be understood in this vein.
3. Before both Koreas joined the UN at the same time in 1991, UNESCO had been the only UN agency in which the two Koreas could participate. Compared with South Korea, which joined UNESCO in 1950, North Korea became a member only in 1974, and it seems it has started to join representative conventions and programmes of UNESCO, most of which are in the field of cultural and natural heritage.
4. The nomination file was submitted to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre in January 2002. However, the application was deferred at the 27th session of the World Heritage Committee in July 2003. The nomination was reconsidered in the following year, and finally inscribed onto the World Heritage List as the first World Heritage of North Korea. Meanwhile, China also submitted a separate nomination related to the Koguryo Kingdom under the name of the ‘Capital Cities and Tombs of the Ancient Koguryo Kingdom’ in the same year. Interestingly, these two parties did not work on a joint nomination, which seemingly was due to different perspectives toward the history of the Koguryo Kingdom (Shin Citation2011, 101–102).
5. Since 2001, the World Heritage Centre has coordinated conservation and capacity-building activities in North Korea to safeguard Koguryo-era burial sites, in particular for mural paintings, and this South-North Korea cooperation through the Centre still continues today. For further details on such cooperation, visit the World Heritage Centre’s website (UNESCO Citation2022c).
6. On the other hand, the background of this additional provision on joint excavation can be understood in the context of excavation for human remains, which can be granted another sanction exemption for North Korea as a humanitarian mission together with cooperation for heritage excavation. However, human remains were considered as cultural heritage since 1994, when the first legislation on cultural heritage was adopted in North Korea (Article 2). It is another issue whether the inflow of foreign aid for heritage would contribute to the conservation and management of heritage sites in North Korea (Kim and Seonbok Citation2019), as international assistances usually have a periodic monitoring system managed by the secretariats of international organizations (e.g. UNESCO’s transparent portal on the contribution of Member States on specific international project: https://opendata.unesco.org/en/).
7. In Korean, ‘bi-mul-jil-mun-hwa-yu-san.’ This term can be translated into English as ‘non-physical cultural heritage,’ following the Chinese term ‘fēi wùzhì wénhuà yíchăn (非物质文化遗产).’ Since 2015, the term has been shortened to ‘bi-mul-jil-yu-san,’ which can be translated as ‘non-physical heritage.’ However, North Korea uses the term ‘intangible cultural heritage’ for its official translation for periodic reporting to UNESCO, and this paper follows that usage.
8. ICH inventory of North Korea, submitted in November 2013 to UNESCO, which can be found at https://ich.unesco.org/doc/src/24405.pdf (accessed on 31 March 2022).
9. For further explanation of the legal changes made in 2018, see Jeon (Citation2021, 2–3).
10. In 2012, North Korea, which lacked funds and technology for the development of Mt. Baekdu, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Changbai Mountain Management Committee of Jilin Province, China, for joint development of Mt. Baekdu. China’s desire to develop its relatively underdeveloped Northeast region and North Korea’s desire to nurture its tourism industry coincided. However, North Korea’s application for Mt. Baekdu as a Global Geopark also reflected its symbolism of national identity and the historical relationship between North Korea’s leader, the Kim family, and the mountain.
11. Complex of Koguryo Tombs (2004) and Historic Monuments and Sites in Kaesong (2013/original submission in 2007).
12. This kind of revision of relevant law to facilitate inscription on the UNESCO list happened in South Korea as well. In 2015, the Act on the Safeguarding and Promotion Of Intangible Cultural Heritage was adopted, which expanded the categories of ICH elements in accordance with the 2003 Convention and changed the domestic requirements for UNESCO nomination applications (Kim and Nam Citation2016, 2021).
13. This is also partially due to the fact that revenue from the tourism industry is not directly prohibited by UN sanctions (Wertz Citation2019, 14).
14. Among natural heritage sites in North Korea, Mt. Baekdu can be understood in a different way, as it is closely related to the promotion of legitimacy of Kim Jong-un’s regime (Kim Citation2014a).
15. When North Korea revised the 2015 Law, it added provisions on the use of heritage and stipulated the need to pay an entrance fee to visit heritage sites.
16. UNESCO promotes ecotourism for the purpose of sustainable development of internationally protected areas.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jihon Kim
Jihon Kim is a chief of the Division of International Cooperation Programme at the Korean National Commission for UNESCO, and adjunct professor at the Graduate School of World Heritage Studies of Konkuk University and Graduate School of Culture Management of Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea. Her research interests are international cultural heritage law and policy, with a particular focus on the participation of non-State actors.
Myoung-Shin Kim
Myoungshin Kim is a senior researcher at the LG AI Research, and adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Culture Management at Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea. Previously, he was a Senior Programme Specialist at the Korean National Commission for UNESCO. He holds a Ph.D in North Korean Studies from the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, South Korea. His research interests include North Korea’s social and cultural change, inter-Korean integration and AI ethics in socialist country.