ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the preservation, maintenance, and sustaining of ritual music and dance in two settings in Seoul, the Royal Ancestral Shrine and the Confucian Shrine, the Taesongjon. The first is a World Heritage Site entered in the UNESCO list in 1995 but earlier designated in Korea as Historic Site 125. It has two halls, the 19-shrine Chongjon and 16-shrine Yongnyongjon, Important Tangible Cultural Properties 227 and 821 respectively. The Confucian Shrine is Important Tangible Property 141. The chapter provides an example of how cultural iconicity is contested, synchronically and diachronically, by those involved within the creation and recreation of an intangible cultural property, and by those outside who seek to valorize it. It seeks to unravel aspects in which the two sites, and their ritual music and dance, occupy contested spaces. Intangible heritage differs from tangible heritage because it requires promotion through performance and creation as a lived experience.
