1. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, together with the Cultural Heritage Administration and the Korean National Commission for UNESCO, will hold the “Seminar on the 30th Anniversary of Korea’s Accession to the UNESCO World Heritage Convention” in Seoul (Lotte Hotel Seoul) on May 2.

※ The Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage

- It was adopted in 1972 to identify, report and promote cultural heritage around the world considered worthy of preservation. As of April 2018, a total of 193 countries, including the ROK (1988), have acceded to the Convention.

- The World Heritage Committee (21 countries, six-year term/mostly four years) is in charge of the inscription and monitoring of world heritage properties.

2. The upcoming meeting, to be held to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the ROK’s accession to the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, will bring together 11 international experts in world heritage, and representatives from 10 member countries of the 21-member World Heritage Committee. They will look at the progress in implementing the World Heritage Convention and issues facing it, and engage in in-depth discussions on the way forward for the Convention.

o The meeting will consist of three sessions: △keynote session (theme: progress and challenges in implementing the World Heritage Convention), △session 1 (theme: issues facing the World Heritage Convention, and responses), and △session 2 (theme: interpretation of sites of memory).

o In particular, participants will focus their discussions on strategies for the interpretation of sites of memory from the perspective of universal human values and the protection of human rights. The results of the thematic research “Sites of Memory: International Coalition of Sites of Conscience” conducted by the ROK in 2017 through the World Heritage Centre will be announced in session 2.

※ Major participants

- International experts: Director of the Arab Regional Centre for World Heritage Mounir Bouchenaki; International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) Hungarian National Committee President Tamas Fejerdy; Senior Adviser on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s World Heritage Programme Peter Shadie; Treasurer of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience Jean-Louis Luxen; Professor Akihisa Matsuno at the Osaka School of International Public Policy, etc.

- Members of the World Heritage Committee: China, Indonesia, Tunisia, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Uganda, Spain, etc.

3. The upcoming meeting, which will mark the third international meeting in the area of world heritage interpretation hosted by the ROK, is expected to help the ROK, a country leading discussions on world heritage, solidify its leadership, as well as serve as an opportunity to establish close cooperative relations with the members of the World Heritage Committee and experts ahead of the 42nd session of the World Heritage Committee (June 24-July 2, Bahrain).

※ The ROK held the first (November 2016) and second (November 2017) international meetings on world heritage interpretation in Seoul, and held side events under the theme of heritage interpretation on the sidelines of the 40th (July 2016) and 41st (July 2017) sessions of the World Heritage Committee. The ROK will also hold related side events during the 42nd session of the World Heritage Committee (June 2018).

* unofficial translation