중국의 유네스코 세계유산 등재 추진과 백두산 내러티브에 대한 중국화

Abstract

The UNESCO Geopark Committee is expected to officially announce Mount Baekdusan as a UNESCO Global Geopark under the name ‘Mount Changbaishan’ in March 2024. North Korea also applied for registration under the name ‘Mount Paektu’ in 2019, but only Mount Baekdusan on the Chinese side was registered. China has long ago designated Mount Baekdusan as a ‘World Biosphere Reserve’ in the process of registering it as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This time, they did their best to have it listed as a UNESCO Global Geopark. Specifically, transportation infrastructure was expanded to attract tourists and by researching ‘Changbaishan Cultural Theory’, they developed the logic that Mount Baekdusan is a Chinese mountain historically and culturally. Recently, the Northeast Regional Medical Valley has been formed in Tonghua City and the ‘Changbaishan Intangible Cultural Heritage’ is being developed centering on Tonghua College of Education. We must be wary of the Sinicization of our people’s culture, which has historically shaped our living space on Mount Baekdusan. In order to jointly register Mount Baekdusan as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is urgent to raise public awareness, research and interest from academia, and government response. Baekdu Mountain is a symbolic space of Korea as a sacred mountain and a spiritual mountain of the Korean people. However, China is trying to Chineseize half of Mt. Baekdu. We must be wary of this, and it is urgent to raise public awareness, research and interest from academia, and respond from the government in order to jointly register Mt. Baekdu as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.