Culture, Identity and Historic Preservation: A case study of Chinatown, Incheon City

Ref.: 90
Domaine thématique: 01 Intégrité physique des paysages urbains historiques
Date de réception: 30/10/2008

AUTEURS (*Auteur principal)

EOM, Sujin * (République de Corée) - Seoul National Universty

RÉSUMÉ

Located in the outer part of Incheon, there existed both the Japanese and the Chinese concession in Bukseong-dong and the district has therefore functioned as the arena of the cultural struggle between Japan and China. Since the middle of the 19th century, cultural landscape of this area has been accepted by native Korean citizens as far from indigenous one. Especially, the urban landscape, on which the Chinese culture was engraved as the restaurants serving Chinese food and the stores selling Chinese goods, has been building up the unfamiliar and even exotic memory around this area for decades.
Stimulated by the normalized relations between South Korea and China in 1992, the redevelopment project around the Chinese settlement area of Bukseong-dong was conducted in 2001, which was described as "the Redevelopment of Incheon Chinatown"(Lee 2008). It was the cultural symbol embedded in this area that played the primary role of locomotive in the project, since the spatial significance of `Chinatown' was supposed to be able to attract tourists and financing from China. The lack of understanding of the Chinese culture around this area as well as expertise to deal with preservation practice, however, resulted in the counterfeit representation of Chinese culture and even failed to attract the overseas Chinese capital.
Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning that there are various issues stemmed in the process of the redevelopment project. As adopted into the World Heritage Convention in 1992, the concept of cultural landscape was derived from recognition that landscape is an expression of human history in which layers of time are accumulated. Of all things, its adoption by the World Heritage Centre was of importance because it enabled the discussion on authenticity of cultural landscape and interpretation to be deepened(Blake 2008, Garden 2006, Akagawa 2006). As seen in many subsequent arguments on the notion, cultural landscape is currently deemed to embrace everyday places, specifically the value of ordinary people and their strong sense of place(Taylor 2004). Who was involved in the process? What kind of places did they embed their collective memory? How could the answers to these questions be conveyed through heritage management process? All these questions concern how we identify our `culture', and thus lead us to ask ourselves who we are.
Based on these considerations on cultural landscape, this paper examines the methodology to discover and assess cultural identity manifested through the built environment of Chinatown, Incheon. It also investigates the procedure of `the Chinatown Redevelopment Project', focusing on how cultural landscape in this area has been transformed into the current form. In actual research process, the rapid ethnographic assessment procedure is used, including archival research, behavioral and sensory mapping, in-depth interviewing and participant observation.
This study contributes to the body of empirical evidence to assess outstanding universal value of our cultural landscape and insists on preserving the cultural identity inherent in it. In addition, it underlines the importance of multicultural perspectives in cultural heritage management, which should be based on the deliberate cultural considerations.

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