Background

According to the nomination file of ‘Nongak’ registered in the list of UNESCO, the primary attribute of Nongak popular performing art is its openness, ‘anyone’ is readily accepted to join in, and ‘everyone’ is given a role for common well-being. The purpose of performing Nongak is 1) to pray for peace and prosperity and 2) to promote harmony through strong communal ties. Through implementation of the ICH plan, the domestic transmission education programmer supported Nongak band music as a medium for cultural empathy and communication between community members and others. The current situation of the Utdari Nongak transmission education center is characteristic, as it is in Sangok Sports Park above the sewage treatment plant, along with other kinds of sports centers such as Gateball, Basketball, and Volleyball Courts. The allocation indicates that local administrators identify the function of Utdari Nongak as one of the sports during leisure time. The ‘transmission education’ in ‘the transmission education center’ has been implemented for over 35 years since it was certified by the local government and has moved its place many times.

Transmission and education are combined as one of the methods used for safeguarding and increasing visibility. According to Labrador (2022), heritage education can be classified into three categories: 1) education ‘about’ heritage, 2) education ‘through’ heritage, and 3) education ‘for’ heritage. Education ‘for’ heritage is the focus of this study. Because of the competencies which oriented toward the combination of ‘cognitive, affective, action.’ The orientation fits with the way of learning knowledge and skills, inspiration, and enjoyment of using the local ICH element through the process of transformation that becomes aware of civil and civic roles. Local versions of ICH elements are applied “as an entry point” (Labrador, 2022, p. 28) that engage with global and open opportunities for citizens as security payers to their society. Explorable factors are the variables and parameters that “facilitate the effective safeguarding of ICH” (Labrador, 2022, p. 28) for learning pathways, and strategies for heritage ecosystems. Learning ICH elements is “mimetic processes” (Wulf, 2004, p. 4) because ‘learning’ civil citizens ‘becoming like’ the teaching civic citizens that sharing benefits, merits, and interests.

The scopes of people to study include 1) ‘citizens who decide to participate in learning,’ 2) ‘teachers including the holder (i.e., bearer, carrier), certified trainers, successors,’ and 3) ‘administrators’ in ‘Utdari Nongak Transmission Education Center,’ and affiliated organizations including Daejeon ICH Transmission Center and Daejeon Cultural Foundation. The categories of people are differentiated according to the way they function and benefit from ‘transmission education’ in the local element of Nongak. The ‘citizens who decide to participate in learning’ are stakeholders, and their merit is to mainly learn the way of spending leisure, improve health, etc. The duty of the ‘teachers including a holder, and shareholders (i.e., certified trainers, successors)’ is mainly work, perform, transmit for safeguarding and promoting the element of ICH as a way that prevents over-commercialization as they agreed to the consent form. Another kind of shareholder is ‘administrators,’ who differ in that they aim to work to maximize their career development, credit, and so on.

What I problematize is the decontextualization of the transmission education place as an intergenerational contact zone crossing the border of roles. It is the lack of pulling ‘diverse citizens’ to the ‘noisy transmission education place’ near a wide non-residential area, venture corporation cooperation center. Sound noise serves as a good example of the formation of interstices in the process of reproducing a difference. But, as transmission education becomes more beneficial to teachers, including the holder, it can lead to decontextualization of transmission that is alienated from general local citizens as stakeholders and the community. A transmission place that is recognized as noisy by public citizens is problematic because misrecognition prevents ‘solidarity, cooperation, and sense of shared identity.’ It is a hazard to the sharing of benefits by geographically diverse participants. Citizens who recognize the local element transmission center as a noisy place cannot continue to participate in transmission education. Thus, reproduction through transmission comes to impotent with the hazard of helplessness, impotence, and fading.

The ‘place-less-ness’ is the appropriate notion that fits to the raised problem ‘transmission education place that is recognized as noisy by local citizens,’ which indicates a futile operation, uselessness and powerlessness of forming contextualized meaning with the place, through the communal sound making that is reproduced from there. The ‘place-less-ness’ is a byproduct of place composed of “locale, location, and sense of place” (Arefi, 1999, p. 179). Loss of meaning, attachment, and rootedness with a place is also connected with ‘how people’s perception of attachment to place has transformed over time.’

The conceptualization of the local ICH transmission education place as placeless is due to local citizens’ powerlessness and uselessness in forming contextualized meanings that lead to benefits from the ICH sound. It is made from the process of transmission in place. The underlying cause is ‘the homogenizing effects of modernity.’ In contemporary Korean society, the meaning of place is created by the economic surplus benefit from 1) the economic value re-created from the place and 2) real estate exchange, which is expected from the transaction record of territory prices. People’s attachment to their place is weaker than before because of the increased mobility and freedom that maximize surplus money. Currently many spaces are territorial and a tool of flexible accumulation. The “space as place or locality” (Gupta & Ferguson, 1992, p. 8) doesn’t experienced, obsolete, and blurred its roots.

The local element of ICH is important as a process vehicle that avoids and is alarming “to the exclusiveness of local consciousness” (Yan & Li, 2023, p. 4). Exclusiveness can lead to regional conflict, misrepresentation, and underrepresentation. The ‘local place’ identity and disposition that coming from rural countryside which ancestors are farmers is not always ‘merit’ identity to publicly display currently. It does so particularly when interacting with other categories of people who occupy a well-known urban place in a specially separated city. Even though countryside local people do not publicly display theirs, they can be determined through behavioral codes and language cues, such as regional accents, in an informal way. People often ask ‘the place’ they are living, spending leisure, and working time in.

Among the unacceptable hazards of ICH, in my view, ‘decontextualization’ has been the most underscored. Attentions goes toward mainly ‘over-commercialization.’ In the year that Nongak is registered, what mainly agreed by communities is the endeavor of ‘transmission education’ and keeping the element from ‘over-commercialization.' On the ‘Letter of Consent,’ among other hazards, the ‘commercial exploitation’ only mentioned to ‘not to be subject to.’

The contextualization (i.e., the reason of mattered recognition) of the local element ICH as noisiness, uneasiness, uselessness is because what imagined by citizens as the ‘tradition’ is the kind of the elegance that ‘fixed’ or ‘just protected as it originally does in the past.’ The assumed reason for the lack of pulling outsiders to the place is twofold: 1) clumsy synchronization with the comprehension of energetic and symbolic sounds, and 2) generational gap and indifference. If the practical problem persists in the future, the subcategory of the ICH element becomes less fit for the criteria of representativity in a way that loses the diversity of the demographic population that learns, enjoys, and uses it. To suggest future feasible actions, the explanation needs to be delineated more specifically regarding the benefits through relations of different scopes of people by being ‘in’ or even ‘near’ the place. The benefit and noisiness are ‘the two sides of the same coin’ which is being ‘within’ or ‘near’ the place. The ‘benefit’ is learning, inspiration, and enjoyment, which actually takes part in. The ‘noisiness’ is uneasiness, waste of spent time in the transmission place, uselessness and powerlessness of forming contextualized meaning and merit in the place.

In the case of ‘Utdari Nongak Transmission Education Center’, the location of the transmission education center is in the area on the ‘outskirts’ of Daejeon city having a high density of office buildings, research institutions called ‘Daejeon Venture Cooperation Complex’; a homogenized ‘edge city’ which is a specialized suburb in highly commercialized and modernized ‘business’ complexes. There, the local ICH transmission education center on ‘the sports park’ is for ‘free’ entertainment. Intra-national citizens who have a stake and duty ‘to safeguard and utilize the local element’ of ICH do not authenticate their sense of time-intensive meaning in the transmission education place where the iconic sound of Nongak played and transmitted. The in-authenticable hazard by citizens is problematic because sensing the ICH place they are in and related as a beneficial, meaningful, and authentic ‘place’ with attachment is the precondition of experiencing the local, nation, and the world in a beneficial and meaningful way.