Overview
- UNESCO's evaluation body has recommended that the traditional knowledge and skills for making hanji, Korean mulberry-bark paper, be inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
- The nomination emphasizes hanji's communal production steps—harvesting and processing mulberry bark, fiber beating, sheet forming and sun-drying—plus its use in writing, building, crafts and conservation work.
- A final decision rests with the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage at its upcoming session in Xiamen, and items the evaluation body recommends are rarely overturned.
- The same UNESCO document also recommended North Korea's taekwondo nomination, prompting Seoul's heritage agency to say it will seek extensions or further steps for ROK taekwondo but that a joint inscription now appears unlikely.
- Practitioners and local governments hope UNESCO recognition would help preserve skills from an aging artisan base by boosting apprenticeships, festivals and new markets for hanji in restoration, design and advanced materials.