Dutbeki is a local dance which has been transmitted by customs in Kyongsang area since ancient times. This is a formless dance that each of the villagers enjoyed with their own colors at seasonal farming events in the past. Today, however, Dutbeki is disappearing with a rapidly changing social environment. In this situation, the researcher is going to study the origin and present condition of Dutbeki, local dance of Ulsan area, to protect and transmit it to the future. The method is as follows. Regarding the origin of Ulsan Dutbeki, the researcher reviewed the records of life from the past in Ulsan area. As for the current status of transmission, the current status of the natural handover of Dutbeki in Ulsan area and the current status of it with the participation of the researcher, a native of Ulsan, are discussed. The folklorist Jung Sangbark has established Dutbeki, which had been called as a generic name, as a local intangible culture by attaching a local name to it. As a result, Dutbeki in Ulsan area was designated as Ulsan Dutbeki and the value as an intangible cultural heritage was obtained. In this context, this study has made an accomplishment of confirming the identity of the intangible cultural heritage in Ulsan by establishing the origin of Ulsan Dutbeki and examining the current status of its inheritance.

Recently the copyright issue in the traditional cultural field is being discussed due to the copyright claim on traditional dance. The copyright norms is unfamiliar to those who are engaged in traditional cultural fields in Korea. Despite this unfamiliarity, the number of cases in which copyright law is applied to the field of traditional culture is increasing. The copyright cases that have occurred in the field of literary works such as books in the past are now spreading to art, music, and dance. In this article, I have discussed some issues in judging the creativity and substantial similarity of cultural heritage-based works through representative cases of art works and musical works related to intangible cultural heritage. The copyright system is based on the assumption that a specific author has exclusive copyright for the work. On the other hand, many cultural heritages presuppose that ‘communities or groups’ have created, maintained and propagated them, and it is not easy to identify copyright holders because their boundaries are ambiguous. In addition, in order to establish an exclusive right such as copyright, a clear boundary must be set for the work, which is an object of rights, but the boundary of the traditional culture that has continuously changed from the past is not clear. Therefore, I suggest the open source model as an alternative to exclusive copyright.

This study focused on the transformation process in which the traditional dance of Korea created new content and forms and wrote modern cultural discourses after the appearance of a modern theater. The construction of a theater established a modern value system including the perceptions of time and space, formation of a consumption structure, and emergence of the audience in a horizontal order. These changes happened around theaters such as the Mudong Banquet Hall, Hyeoryulsa, Gwangmudae and Danseongsa in Korea, and these spaces attracted the attention of the public through the changes of their microscopic repertoires mostly based on the traditional arts. They held values as they provided the public with aesthetic objects to be enjoyed and created a new cultural tradition through the gradual transformation of the culture. The traditional performance arts communicated with the public and moved forward by making an adjustment into stage performance arts in the middle of microscopic transformations that included the star system based on two Gisaengs of Gwangmudae, Ok-yeop and San-ok, a series story in a newspaper called "Yedanilbaekin," and long-term performance of Gangseonru.

Korean traditional dance is a well-established traditional art as years go by. Recently, Korean traditional dances have seen renewed popularity, but in the process, new interpretations and transformations have eroded the historical and spiritual values inherited in these traditional dances. This study is to rediscover these historical and spiritual values by re-examining the life and dance philosophy of Han Sung-Jun (韓成俊, 1874-1941), and how these had been handed down to Han Youn-sook and Lee Ae-ju. The research reviews existing literature with comprehensive and in-depth analysis. Han Sung-Jun, who came from a long line of dance artists who inherited and developed dance practices reflecting the unique identity of the Korean people, believed that it was through dancing that the human body could truly manifest its natural vitality and emphasized patient learning and training. Han Sung-jun's philosophy was passed on to his granddaughter, Han Young-sook (韓英淑, 1920-1989), who emphasized the exclusion of foreign imitation and of exaggeration by utilizing the spontaneous characteristics of Korean dance. She particularly criticized the blind following/copying of foreign dances and emphasized a focus on traditional Korean dances. Lee Ae-ju (李愛珠, 1947-), who in turn inherited the school of thought from Han Young-sook, took the view that it was through dance training that the mind and soul could have release towards full realization of the human nature. She emphasized the training that all of the body's energy sprang from the lower abdomen to introspect within oneself and served as the foundation for all Korean traditional songs and dance.

This study aims to examine the aesthetic resonance principle of Korean dance by analyzing how the place of Korean dance in the Middle Ages was influenced by the effect of dance through the ‘ki (氣, energy)’ theory by philosopher Choi Han-gi (1803~1879). As a research method, records related to dance were selected from historical literature, and Choi Han-gi's books were used as main texts, and related discourses were referenced. The original texts of the old documents used online databases with major old documents such as the National History Compilation Committee database, and keywords were limited to ‘mu (巫, shaman)’, ‘mu (舞, dance)’, and ‘chum (춤, dance)’. The results of the study are as follows. First, Korean dance was organically adapted to the spacetime of traditional society. Second, it was confirmed that the space of life was entangled as a place of dance in the traditional society. Third, it was possible to aesthetically explain that the principle of resonance in a special space called “sai (사이, between)” among dance places in traditional society was in ‘communication’. The main keywords of this study ―placeness, resonance, singi (神氣, primal energy), communication― are concepts that share the meanings of resonance as the nature of dance. The keywords are expected to contribute a academic and practical direction for today's dance theory.

It is possible to determine how nongak (traditional Korean music performed by farmers) was sustained and what changes happened through various records including the history of lives and experiences of nongak performers, their personal diaries, village journals, village self-governing document, village minutes, etc. Using these records, this study elucidated the continuance and changing spectrum of nongak inherited in Sopo-ri, Jindo-gun, Jeolanam-do, the factors of change in and creation of tradition by village nongak, and the phenomenon of geolgul-jinbeomnon becoming permanent in Sopo-geolgun-nongak due to its designation as an cultural asset. This study also examined the identity of geolgun in Sopo-geolgun-nongak and how this designation became permanent. The composition of percussionists in the current Sopo-geolgun-nongak, such as the Jipsa, Mudong, Jorijung, Posu, Changbu, and Nongi(Nongu), or the performances of Geolgul-jinbeomnon had ben reconstructed since the mid-1980s based on the nongak document called Seosan-daesa-jinbeop-gungo from Haenam and other similar records. This was verified in this study through the changes in organizational composition of nongak bands since the 1960s. Nongak passed down in Sopo-ri was variously called as Sopo-ri Reconstruction Youth Society Nongak, Jindo Nongak, Geolgun Nongak, and Sopo-geolgun-nongak, etc. This study focused on examining the processes of Jindo Nongak Preservation Village formation and the designation of Sopo-geolgun-nongak as an intangible cultural asset in Jeolanam-do.