Confucian woodblocks, separated families data make UNESCO list

SEOUL, Oct. 10 (Yonhap) -- A set of Korea's Confucian printing woodblocks and a decades-old local TV program to reunite families separated by the Korean War have been added to UNESCO's documentary heritage list, officials said on Saturday. The decision was made during the 12th session of the International Advisory Committee (IAC) of the UNESCO Memory of the World, which took place in the United Arab Emirates from Sunday to Tuesday, and upon the approval of UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova. The woodblocks are comprised of 64,226 pages of 718 kinds of books written by Confucian scholars during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), when the ideology served as the ruling philosophy. After being donated from 305 family clans, the Advanced Center for Korean Studies has been in charge of managing the assets. Also being added to the list is a live television show titled "Search for Separated Families" aired by South Korea's public broadcaster KBS in 1983, and a total of 20,552 related materials. The program, aimed to help people find their loved ones lost during the 1950-53 Korean War, was to be a one-time special broadcast, but positive responses from the public prompted it to last for 138 days in a row, resulting in 10,189 successful reunions. The woodblocks, the TV program and relevant materials were recommended to be added to the list by the IAC earlier this year, according to the Cultural Heritage Administration. The designation of the two brought the total number of South Korea's heritage items on the list to 13, which includes the Hunminjeongeum Manuscript, the original manuscript of the Korean alphabet The two South Korean assets are among 47 items from dozens of nations that have been added to the register during this session. Documents related to the Nanjing massacre were also inscribed in the register, where some 300,000 people died in a killing spree in the Chinese region by imperial Japan over about six weeks in 1937. It is one of the most thorny issues in Sino-Japan relations, with Tokyo failing to atone for its wartime atrocities. But the international organization dismissed China's application for the inscription of data on wartime sex slaves, or comfort women, who were forced into military brothels for Japanese soldiers. The Memory of the World program, established in 1992, seeks to protect and record the world's valuable documents and widen public access to them through the Internet. graceoh@yna.co.kr (END)