Today's News

The National Administration of History and Heritage recently registered 20-odd objects associated with the resourcefulness and talents of the Korean people as elements of national and local intangible cultural heritage.

Nineteen of them are national ICH elements. 

Among them are the practices of using chestnuts and other wild fruits.

The practice of using chestnuts refers to the technique and custom adopted in the course of using chestnuts, including Songchon chestnut and Kumya large chestnut of Korea which have been famous since olden times.

Songchon chestnut, a late-ripening strain, produces small nuts, but they are very sweet and the inner skin is easy to peel off. The tree is widespread in the Songchon area of South Phyongan Province.

In the country, the most part of which is mountainous, the practice of using wild fruits was also formed and has been inherited and developed in the course of the people’s positive creative activities.

This practice is one of the customs peculiar to the Korean people which were adopted in the course of making more rational use of the fresh taste and medicinal ingredients of natural wild fruits.

Among the newly registered national ICH elements are also the tale of Ondal, which widely spread among the Koreans centring on the Pyongyang area in the period of Koguryo, and the folk stories of Kaesong which were created and handed down in the Kaesong area.

The stories clearly show the morality and struggle of the Korean people, who are sincere, diligent and faithful to moral duty and demonstrated courage in the fights to defend the country, and the history and culture of the corresponding periods.

Also inscribed in the national ICH list are the method of making fermented fish, one of the fermented foods favoured by all the Koreans, pheasant soup with high nutritional and medicinal value, and gruel of rice and pine nuts well known as a nourishing food with delicious and mellow flavour.

The pine-needle fumigation, a traditional treatment method, was also registered as a national ICH element.

It is a traditional method of treating diseases by exposing certain regions of the body to the steam or smoke generated with pine needles or by washing them with an infusion of pine needles.

Other national ICH elements newly registered include the women’s practice of using make-up, the practice of naming, the techniques of making dolls and jade and wooden craftworks, and janggu (hourglass drum) ensemble.

Six objects were newly registered as local ICH elements, including the grilling of shellfish, the roasting of gizzard shad and the practice of using Kalsan hot spring.