2 Sets of Historic Korean Documents Listed by UNESCO

Two Korean historical records have been listed on the Memory of the World Register.

The 12th Meeting of the MOW International Advisory Committee in Abu Dhabi last week recommended UNESCO add Confucian printing woodblocks from the Chosun period (1392-1910) and records of an epic reunion of war-dispersed families broadcast live on KBS in the 1980s.

With the new additions, Korea now has 13 assets on the register.

The Woodblocks consist of over 64,000 hand-carved blocks for the printing of 718 books.

Mostly handed down in clan families and Confucian scholars in the southeastern region, they had been poorly taken care of, in some cases being used as washboards, before the Advanced Center for Korean Studies recognized their heritage value and started a campaign to collect them in 2002.

The archive of the reunion of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War comprises over 20,000 records of the event that took place over four-and-a-half months from June 30, 1983, including more than 460 videotapes of the live broadcasts and applications by the families to take part.