1. INTRODUCTION
South Korea has traditionally been a culture that uses wood as a material for housing and living, but wood resources started depleting as it experienced the Japanese colonial era and the Korean War, and due to rapid urbanization and economic growth, materials such as concrete and plastic have replaced wood (Hur, 2005). Concrete used as a construction material for various structures consumes a lot of resources and energy to manufacture, also emitting a large amount of carbon dioxide in the manufacturing process of cement, which is the main raw material of concrete (Park and Park 2008). In addition, plastic, one of the petrochemicals used in almost every space in modern society, is also causing many environmental problems due to its non-biodegradability (Alam et al., 2018). In addition, as the quality of life is improved in recent years, as people enter a welfare society, interest in the environment and health increases, and the value of wood with eco-friendly characteristics is increasing.
The importance of using wood is also an important issue from a national perspective in terms of responding to climate change, and the Korea Forest Service enacted the 『Act on the Sustainable Use of Timber』 for the revitalization of wood use (Korea Forest Service, 2013). The Korea Forest Service measures and publishes the Wood Culture Index annually, an index that measures and quantifies the policy for wood use and wood culture promotion, social infrastructure, and the public’s level of wood use through legislation. Although the Wood Culture Index shows an annual increase from 2016 to 2019, but social infrastructure and policies do not support it compared to the general public’s high interest in wood (Korea Association of Wood Culture, 2016; 2017; 2018; 2019). Although a relatively favorable social atmosphere has been created for wood use and woodworking activities, it is believed that there is a lack of awareness and foundation for wood culture because there are not many opportunities to enjoy actual wood culture. Therefore, it is necessary to find various wood cultural resources through systematic classification of wood culture and case studies and prepare foundational data for establishing a promotion strategy so that the public can enjoy wood culture.
According to Article 2, Paragraph 5 of the 『Act on the Sustainable Use of Timber』, the wood culture is defined as, ‘It refers to the common values, knowledge, norms, and lifestyles of members of society who prefer and use wood products that realize various functions of wood.’ Although the law defined the concept of wood culture as limited to wood products, it was considered that it is inappropriate to limit the concept of wood culture to wood products to carry out the classification of wood cultural resources, which is the purpose of this study. In the study of wood culture from the sociological aspect, wood culture was defined as, ‘Common values, norms, knowledge, and lifestyles of members of society who take using of wood for granted in consideration of its material-oriented and ideological and spiritual ambivalence.’ (Hur, 2005).
Cultural resources are generally tangible and intangible materials that form the basis for culture, and similar concepts have been used interchangeably according to the research purpose, target, and period. Valuation of cultural resources can vary and change depending on factors such as era and time, region and place, information and technology, geography and climate (Lee, 2015). In South Korea, the academically defined cultural resources refer to various resources that have been created, maintained, and passed down through cultural activities of mankind, and they are not limited to cultural heritages passed down in history but are regarded as having values as the basis of a new cultural industry (Cheong and Liu, 2017). Internationally, cultural resources are raw materials based on cities and their value, and with the opening of the world of cultural resources as assets that can replace coal, steel, and gold, it has become clear that every region has its own uniqueness. Thus, it has been defined to include 『creating something out of nothing』 with historical, industrial and artistic heritage (Landry, 2012). This perspective of cultural resources means that cultural resources are the basic means of people’s lives, not some particular sort of objects or mental activities. In order for cultural resources to be valued as cultural resources, people who recognize the value should exist and they should be able to feel its value and satisfy the need for conservation, discovery, and utilization based on place, region, and space.
The definition of wood cultural resources is unclear lexically and academically. However, wood cultural resources based on the concept of wood culture and cultural resources can be defined as tangible and intangible products created because of human cultural activities that contain the cultural values of wood and using of wood in terms of conservation, discovery, and utilization. In this study, in order to classify the types of wood cultural resources, classification systems for cultural resources in previous studies were analyzed, and based on this, the study sought to provide the classification criteria for types of wood cultural resources.
2. MATERIALS and METHODS
In order to classify the types of wood cultural resources that are not clearly defined lexically or academically, previous studies on the typology for cultural resources were analyzed. Cultural resources include ‘cultural heritage’ designated by the state or local governments as well as ‘cultural heritage’ that has not yet been designated and needs protection, management, succession, and development. The scope of cultural resources can be largely divided into cultural assets, cultural heritage, and cultural resources (Fig. 1). Cultural assets can be defined as representative ethnic assets and designated by the state and local governments, as they are judged to primarily have the scarcity and conservation value. Cultural heritage is a tangible and intangible ethnic asset passed down from the past, and although it is not designated by the state or local governments, it can be defined as a potential cultural asset that needs to be protected, managed, or inherited and developed. Cultural resources can be defined as tangible and intangible resources that contain cultural values in terms of conservation, discovery and utilization (Cultural Strategy Research Institute; CSRI 2006). Cultural resources can be widely distributed in their categories and can be classified into various types according to classification criteria. In general, cultural resources can be broadly classified as tangible and intangible cultural resources depending on how they exist (Nam, 2007). Tangible cultural resources are a phenomenon that can be accessed through sight, and intangible cultural resources are a phenomenon that cannot be accessed through sight (Table 1).
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), as shown in Table 2, introduced the concept of creation assumed as an extension of culture, defined cultural resources in a broad concept. It was divided into five categories: creative workforce, creative businesses, cultural institutions, historical buildings and sites, and intangible cultural heritage, and each detailed content is presented.
From the perspective of generating added value in the local economy, cultural resources can be classified into six areas of creative cultural industries, community cultural organizations, facilities and spaces, cultural heritage, and festivals and events (Baeker, 2009; Fig. 2): This method of classification includes cultural resources in a relatively modern sense. In South Korea, the policy was proposed that classifying the unique cultural resources of each region by characteristics and understanding the types and characteristics of cultural resources possessed by the region should precede the development of local culture. So, regional cultural resources were classified into people, festivals, folklore, tradition, historic sites, architecture, art, and amusement parks etc. (Ryoo, 2012).
Cultural resources in certain regions are generally systemized into historical and cultural resources, artistic and cultural resources, living and cultural resources, popular cultural resources (social resources), and natural resources (Lee, 2015). There was a case where image cultural resources and marine cultural resources were added in consideration of the specificity of the Busan area to this universal cultural resources classification system (Oh, 2009; Table 3).
The concept of wood cultural resources was redefined by combining the characteristics of wood culture and cultural resources. Wood cultural resources have cultural values of wood and wood use in terms of conservation, discovery, and utilization, and are defined as tangible and intangible products created as a result of human activities. By applying this definition and the Cultural Mapping Tools of Baeker (2009), wood cultural resources were classified into seven types according to the following criteria.:
⦁Cultural heritage / Natural heritage: Resources inherited from the past shall be classified as 『Cultural Heritage』
⦁Facilities and spaces: Facilities where wood culture can be enjoyed will be broadly classified as 『Cultural facilities』
⦁Festival and event: Renaming festivals and events as 『Cultural Events』 which has a clearer meaning
⦁Creative cultural industries: Renaming creative cultural industries as 『Cultural Contents 』 which can be understood more clearly in South Korea
⦁Community cultural organizations: Decided not to consider the scope of wood cultural resources in order not to limit them into a specific region.
⦁『Wood Architecture』 and 『Wood Products』 which include the resources inherited from the past, will be added as it is considered that they are able to reflect future cultural values in the future.
⦁Addition of 『Culture education』, including woodworking education, which is frequently exposed in relation to wood culture.
For presenting examples of each type of wood cultural resource divided into 7 categories, the research targets were determined. The first category, cultural heritage, includes national-designated cultural properties (national treasure, treasure, historical site, national intangible cultural properties, and national folk cultural properties), city / province designated cultural property, and nationally registered cultural properties. The National Cultural Heritage Portal of the Cultural Heritage Administration was used to investigate cases related to wood among the objects of cultural heritage (Cultural Heritage Administration, 2000). The second category, cultural facilities, was investigated focusing on wood culture experience centers and woodworking room operated in South Korea as of 2020, and additionally, major wood cultural museums in abroad were investigated. The third category, culture events, investigated wood-related events and campaigns that are run by 17 local governments and related agencies in South Korea. The fourth category, wooden construction, was investigated by using statistical data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport to investigate the same number of wooden constructions start by year (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, 2016), focusing on the winning works of the Korea Wooden Construction Association (Korea Wooden Construction Association, 2015). The fifth category, cultural contents, among the statistical surveys of the domestic content industry, cases of content production related to wood were investigated for movies, games, broadcasting, and animation. As for the sixth category, culture education, as of 2020, cases of national and private qualifications related to wood and woodworking were investigated (Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education & Training, 2011) sing the private qualification information service and additional survey was conducted on subject education and programs for elementary and middle school students. The last category, wood products requires a new definition that considered the cultural values in terms of wood cultural resources, rather than a simplified definition given in the 『Act on the Sustainable Use of Timber』. Accordingly, the cases that can be included in wood products were examined for traditional cultural heritages and industrial products.
3. RESULTS and DISCUSSION
In terms of conservation, discovery, and utilization, the concept of ‘wood cultural resources’ defined as tangible and intangible products created as a result of cultural activities by mankind and entails the cultural values of wood and wood use, and Baeker’s Cultural Mapping Tools (2009) were applied to the specific items according to the type of wood cultural resources classified into the seven categories as presented in Table 4.
In the process of deriving the criteria for the classification of wood cultural resources defined above, the scope of wood cultural resources is not confined to resources limited to specific regions, and it was considered that enjoying the value of wood cultural resources should not be limited to specific people or groups. A local cultural organization presented as a type of cultural resource classification system in Baeker (2009) is a group of people who engage in activities related to a specific cultural resource and is a form of community organization. Although there has been research on the advantages of local community organizations that can continuously discover and promote information about local cultural resources (Baker, 2017), as mentioned above, it was excluded from the classification of wood cultural resources in order not to limit the values of wood cultural resources to a particular person or group. Even if the local cultural organization is not classified as a separate wood cultural resource, it was considered that cultural values and contents could be contained from the seven categories of wood cultural resources.
It may seem the most objective to classify wood cultural resources into tangible cultural resources and intangible cultural resources like cultural resources, but it was judged that it does not reflect the principle of culture in which tangible material culture is created by intangible culture. In addition, it was considered that cultural resources are ‘heritages’ as they are the remains of the ancestors and at the same time, they can be ‘resources’ from the perspective of modern people and future generations living in the present. In this respect, it is significant that wood architecture and wood products among the seven types of wood cultural resources can reflect current trends and cultural values without pursuing culture as a direct purpose.
The cases of various types of wood cultural resources were investigated to materialize the types of wood cultural resources presented in Table 4. Cultural heritage, the first of the major categories, can be classified into major/middle/minor categories according to the type by Cultural Heritage Administration. In the Cultural Heritage Administration’s classification of cultural assets, the major category is divided into the historic structure, relic, recording inheritance, intangible cultural asset, and natural heritage. If the subject of investigation is limited to those related to wood, there are four major categories: historic structure, relic, recording inheritance, and intangible cultural asset. The quantity of total cultural heritages and wood-related cultural heritages among historic structures is presented in Table 5. The proportion of wood- related cultural heritages to all cultural heritages in the historical building was 87%, 87%, 56%, and 30%, respectively, in the middle categories of dwelling life, politics and national defense, educational culture, and religion and faith. Through the proportion of wood-related cultural heritage, it could be confirmed that we had a culture that has traditionally used wood in residential life. The reason the proportion of wood use in the educational culture is low is that wood was not used in 31 cultural heritages among the cultural heritages classified as the minor category of modern educational culture within the middle category of educational culture. Also, in the case of religion and faith, a large number of stone pagodas and grottoes were included in the historic structure, it was analyzed to have a low proportion of wood use, and the proportion of wood use in modern architectures of other religions except Buddhism was low.
Table 6 presents the study sample of relics and recording inheritance among the major categories of cultural heritage. Relics are divided into middle categories of dwelling crafts and Buddhist sculptures. Dwelling crafts are divided into eight categories: woodcraft, lacquered craft, papercraft, earthenware craft, metal craft, jade craft, clothes craft, and modern craft. The number of woodcraft cultural heritages is 15, which accounts for about 3% of all dwelling crafts. The second middle category of Buddhist sculptures is divided into five minor categories: wooden, stone, metal, dry-lacquered, and clay, and the number of wooden is 366, which accounts for about 29% of the total number of Buddhist sculptures. Recording inheritance is classified into the middle category of engraving, which is then classified into minor categories of printing woodblocks, epigraph, and modern engraving. Among them, the number of printing woodblocks is 164, accounting for 27% of all engravings.
In intangible cultural assets, one of the major categories of cultural heritage, the middle categories related to wood is a traditional technique. Traditional technique is divided into minor categories of arts and crafts, architecture, and art. The study sample of the intangible cultural assets is presented in Table 7. Intangible cultural assets can be divided into national intangible cultural assets and provincial or municipal cultural assets. Of the total 53 national intangible cultural assets, 9% were related to wood, and among provincial or municipal cultural assets, 12% were related to wood.
Among the study sample of cultural heritage presented in Table 5-7, the major examples related to woods were presented in Table 8 according to the major category of historic structure, relic, recording inheritance, and intangible cultural asset.
Examples of historic structure include Sungnyemun Gate in Seoul, Gyeonghoeru Pavilion in Gyeongbok- gung Palace, Jinnamgwan Hall in Yeosu, Geungnakjeon Hall at Bongjeongsa Temple in Andong, Palsangjeon Hall at Beopjusa Temple in Boeun, Injeongjeon Hall in Changdeokgung Palace, Dongchundang Hall in Hoedeok, Daejeon, Seongyojang Hall in Gangneung, Gwandeokjeong Hall in Jeju, Dosanseowon Confucian Academy in Andong, and others. Since various facilities traditionally used for housing and politics were built with wood, designated cultural assets such as national treasures and treasures accounted for the majority, and in the case of the historic structures, the number of survey subjects related to wood was higher than that of other types. Examples that are classified as relics are household crafts are furniture, musical instruments, and folk crafts. There are cases such as furniture with inlaid Mother-of-pearl design presumed to have been used by Empress Sunjeonghyo Hahoe masks and Byeongsan Masks in Andong, Byeongsan mask, and Yi Seo’s Geomungo etc. Examples that are classified as recording inheritance are mostly printing wood blocks which include the printing woodblocks of the Tripitaka Koreana at Haeinsa Temple in Hapcheon, the printing woodblocks of miscellaneous Buddhist scriptures at Buseoksa Temple in Yeongju, and the printing woodblocks of episodes from the Life of Sakyamuni Buddha. Wood furniture making, traditional wooden architecture, wood sculpture, and musical instrument making are examples of intangible cultural assets related to wood.
Cultural facilities, the second category of wood cultural resources, refer to infrastructure and resources that can experience wood culture directly or indirectly, and the examples of the cultural facilities are wood culture experience centers, woodworking shop, woodworking school, and museums etc. This study focused on domestic wood culture experience centers and woodworking rooms and presented examples of major foreign wood culture museums. According to Article 2-8-2 of the 『Act on the Sustainable Use of Timber』, a ‘wood culture experience center’ is a facility and space created for wood culture experience and wood education, providing proper knowledge and information about wood and trees as well as various opportunities to experience woods and woodworking. The project to create wood culture experience centers in Korea began in 2005 to revitalize the Korean people’s wood culture and 37 centers have been operating as of October 2020. The current status of the wood culture experience centers in Korea as of 2020 is presented in Table 9.
A woodworking room is defined as a place where various crafts are made by processing wood, and where educational activities, such as woodworking certificate education, take place along with wood processing such as custom furniture manufacturing, interior construction, and craftwork activities. It is estimated that there are about 1,200 woodworking rooms in Korea as of 2020, and including the number of individual woodworking rooms for hobbies, the number of woodworking rooms is expected to exceed that number. The status of local woodworking rooms as of 2020 was presented in Table 10. As many people take woodworking experience and education in various forms, many woodworking schools are opening, and the trend of woodworking rooms is shifting from making furniture and props to education and experience. Foreign cultural facilities include the Wood Culture Museum in Shanghai, China, the Museum of Wood in Hyogo, Japan, Miyazaki Sadowara General Culture Center in Japan, the Tokyo Toy Museum in Japan, and others.
Culture festival, the third category of wood cultural resources, includes woodworking experiences and wood-related exhibitions where people can directly or indirectly experience various wood cultures. As shown in Table 11, a survey was directly carried out for 17 local governments and relevant organizations on wood-related events and campaigns in 2019. The main cases include the wood culture festival, which is a part of “I Love Wood” campaign carried out since 2012 by Korea Forest Service to advertise the excellence of wood and promote positive awareness of wood use and the increase in the use of wood in daily life. In addition, major domestic wood culture festivals are the Wood Industry Fair (the representative exhibition of wood industry in Korea), the Sangsang Woodworking Experience (an imaginary woodworking experience event) and Hanmok Design Contest (Contest for discovering various wood products in daily life).
Wood architecture, the fourth category, is a structure in which the framework is mainly made of wood and it can be distinguished according to the construction method and materials used. The number of architecture of wood buildings according to statistical data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport are as in Table 12. The number of architectures of wood constructed in Korea showed the maximum value of 14,945 buildings in 2016 and it has decreased again afterward and recently, around 10,000 buildings have been constructed. As a result of investigating architecture of wood in Korea online by focusing on the award-winning works from the Korea Wood Design Awards, the major architectures of wood were found to include the National Forest Research Institute’s Hangreen Wood Tower, Gangchon Training Center at the University of Seoul, Yongam Elementary School Forest Woodworking room, the visitor center at Chollipo Arboretum, Seocheon Dongjabuk Cultural and History Inheritance Facility and Village Hall, Blueworks Publishing House, Andong Wolyeonggyo Bridge.,Etc. There are more various types of wooden structures in abroad including the visitor center at VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver, Canada, LeMay Automobile Museum in Washington, U.S., Whistler Public Library in British Columbia, Canada, Pyramid Kogel Wooden Observation Tower, Carinthia, Austria, and Coeda House in Shizuoka, Japan, and others.
| Year | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The number of constructions for wooden buildings | 10,037 | 10,369 | 10,339 | 11,493 | 13,595 | 14,945 | 13,938 | 11,828 | 10,111 | 10,102 |
Cultural contents, the fifth category of wood cultural resources, are cultural products that generate economic value by objectifying cultural elements with creativity and imagination as a source and refers to multimedia products created and distributed using various media such as movies, games, animations, and broadcasting. According to a statistical survey of the content industry in Korea, 193 Korean films and 571 foreign films were screened per year in South Korea from 2011 to 2019 (Korean Film Council, 2021) and 900 games were produced per year. The broadcasting market has recently produced a wide variety of contents since more than 80% of Koreans watch cable TV and satellite TV, thus various general programming programs are in progress along with the existing terrestrial broadcasting. In the case of cultural contents related to wood, the frequency of its exposure has increased recently, but it is relatively small compared to cultural contents in other fields. Recent wood- related cultural contents can be classified into categories such as movies, broadcasts, animations, and games. Major domestic wood-related cultural contents are the movie about carpenters and two broadcast contents about episodes of woodworking activities. In foreign countries, there are an episode about wooden architecture, movie that express one’s life of growing up as a forestry man, and animations related to forest management and environmental conservation. Among recently popular games, there is a case in which wood blocks are used for various contents such as construction.
Culture education, the sixth category, may include wood and woodworking education through schools as well as recreational activities such as Do It Yourself (DIY), and the process of obtaining national and private certifications. Currently, due to the insufficient system to support wood and woodworking classes in the school curriculum, the private qualification market is rapidly growing as demands for woodworking increase. However, problems such as the lack of educational literacy for wood related certificate holders are constantly being raised. As of 2020, there are 100 types of private qualifications related to wood and woodworking (Private Qualified Information Service). There are five types of national technical qualifications: furniture manufacturing technician (industrial engineer), architectural woodworking technician (industrial engineer), building wood construction expert, formwork technician, and wood crafting technician. Also, there are three types of national professional qualifications: a wooden structure construction engineer (large size wood/ Framing carpenter), a wooden structure management engineer (smaller size wood/ Finish Carpenter), and a cultural property repair technician (Mokjogakjang, master craftsman in wood sculpture).
Wood products, the last category, can be defined as household goods or ornaments that has practicality and aesthetics such as beautifully made furniture and accessories using wood obtained from nature as the main material. Accordingly, wood products referred to the products made as a result of cultural activities by human, rather than the 15 wood products prescribed in Article 2(2) of the 『Act on the Sustainable Use of Timber』 and 『Specifications and quality standards of wood products』 of the National Institute of Forest Science. Practicality refers to properties that are practically useful, such as household crafts, among cultural heritages. Aesthetics is a property that can be judged by identifying beauty, and it refers to relics with artistic properties among cultural heritages. Many products and artworks made using wood are all included in the examples of wood products. Efforts are needed give various cultural values to wood products. Since wood products are produced using wood as the main raw material, species and chronological age analysis of trees can be a way of imparting cultural value to wood products. To this end, various methods of analyzing the age of trees have been proposed (Oh et al., 2019a; Oh et al., 2019b). In regard to wood relics recently discovered from historical sites, various scientific approaches have been made to analyze the climate environment and manufacturing methods in the era when the relics were produced through various species identification, chronological age analysis, morphological analysis, and analysis of wood properties (Lee et al., 2018; Lee and Han, 2018; Lee et al., 2021; Nam and Kim, 2021). It is judged that the analysis of the climate environment, species of trees, and manufacturing methods at the time when wooden relics were produced can be an opportunity to reflect cultural values in wood and wood products that are currently used. The study on traditional manufacturing methods applied to wood (Lee et al., 2021) and the study on manufacturing of large materials traditionally used for wooden facilities (Han et al., 2019a, Han et al., 2019b, Lee, 2020) can be a way to scientifically explain to the public for the basic properties of wood and the performance changes due to processing. Moreover, it is believed that a scientific approach to the differences in wood characteristics according to growing regions (Hwang et al., 2015; Han et al., 2016; Kim and Kim, 2018; Kim et al., 2020) is meaningful since it can provide the public with a variety of topics about wood by enabling various interpretations of cultural values of a particular species of trees.
4. CONCLUSION
In this study, the concept of wood cultural resources was redefined using the characteristics of wood culture and cultural resources. Wood cultural resources were defined as products created as a result of cultural activities by humans that contain the cultural values of wood and wood use in terms of conservation, discovery, and utilization. By analyzing the cases that classified the types of cultural resources, the types of wood cultural resources were classified into seven categories: cultural heritage, cultural facilities, cultural festival, wood architecture, cultural contents, culture education, and wood products. In addition, examples were discovered and provided for each of the seven categories of wood cultural resources. The results of the concept and classification of wood cultural resources derived from this study will be used as data to determine the importance and priority of each type of wood cultural resource in the process of establishing a strategy for spreading wood culture in the future.
