ABSTRACT

This study examines how and why traditional dance in Korea is conceptualized in a way that diverges from the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) Convention of UNESCO. Using literature review and discourse analysis, it analyzes Korean cultural heritage laws and policy documents while critically engaging with theoretical shifts in folklore studies, anthropology, and performance studies that informed the ICH framework. The findings show that the Korean system conceptualizes traditional dance as a formalized performing art of professional practitioners, grounded in a product-oriented paradigm emphasizing historic value, artistry, and superiority. In contrast, the ICH Convention foregrounds a process-oriented paradigm, understanding heritage as community-based practice, transmission, and performance. This divergence produces a structural gap between form-centered and process-centered perspectives of the same dance practices. This study conceptualizes this difference as a tension between “preservation-oriented” and “process-oriented” paradigms, and proposes the necessity of reformulating the dual ontology of the intangibility and tangibility of dance cultural heritage.

This study focuses on Deotbaegi dance in Gyeongsang Province, in searching of geographical dance characteristics and folk feast context. Gyeongsang Deotbaegi has been passed down mainly in four contexts: 1) Deotbaegi in mask dance drama is related to forms of the National Important Intangible Cultural Heritage, such as Ogwangdae (Five clown mask dance drama) and Deulnoleum (Field paly). 2) Deotbaetgi in Jisinbapgi (Dance for the god of the earth), 3) Deotbaegi in field play of Dure (Farmers’ cooperative group), and 4) Deotbaegi at the village festivals. The summary of this study is as follows. First, Deotbaegi in mask dance drama is passed down successfully and it has been spread all over the Gyeongsang Province area. Second, unique motions of Deotbaegi in Jisinbapgi are vanished but only a few simple steps are remained. Third, Deotbaegi in Dure field paly is disappeared in modern times. Forth, Deotbaegi at the village festivals can be seen only at nursing homes and senior citizen centers.