Establishing the significance of intangible heritage in the management of South Korean Historic Gardens

Heritage was defined as “what we value”, or “what we wish to pass on to future generations”, that is to say, heritage is not only a product of the past but also a valuable process in a culture (Deacon, 2003). Furthermore, the relationship between nature and culture is a defining problem for recent debates over the meanings of heritage after The 1972 UNESCO Convention. There is a centuries-old aesthetic discourse in Western culture that treats natural landscapes as objects of beauty, and this has influenced designations of natural heritage beyond human occupants, with the result that they are often considered desirable to conserve with traditional management practice (West & Ndlovu, 2010). The main standard for identifying heritage sites in the Western tradition, particularly Britain, France and Germany during the 19th Century, has formed a tangible perspective which is architectural style and historical significance including different views of power and dominance of particular civilisation (Jokilehto, 1990; Smith & Akagawa, 2009). Recently, recognising the significance of garden heritage has brought awareness of the crucial inputs needed to manage still existing garden heritage and to understand what we already have lost. Garden heritage is a vague term, embodying cultural landscape and tangible landscape. Managing garden heritage is a very important issue in passing our heritage to future generations. The main purpose of this study is to fully integrate the principles of management for intangible garden heritage connecting fabric and intangible assets within the Byeolseo garden which is a unique traditional form of the Korean garden. This study is based on the use of complementary research methods to address the relationship between local government perspectives and international ‘best practice’ concerning garden heritage values with their tangible and intangible aspects. How people establish value of garden heritage was main question that drove this study. As the detachment between local communities and their garden heritage site and the vanish of gardener and head gardener, this study aimed to re-connect between them with strategy for understanding garden heritage sites that respects the public perception of garden heritage. The cases of Byeolseo garden shows that people generally understand garden heritage in terms of significances. This study classifies six significances of gardens, but public perception of garden heritage should be formed by complex of these significances rather than individual significance, which is mostly found to be unclear to the public in South Korea. Therefore, this study encourage that the importance of the public appreciation of garden heritage sites depend on understanding their significance.