The “Arirang Master Award,” established by Culture Masters, was presented to Professor Dipti Omchery Balla. The award ceremony was attended by Dr. SeongYong Park, CEO of Culture Masters and Chairman of the Advocacy Alliance for Culture Masters; Dr. V. Jayarajan, Secretary-General of the ICCN and Chair of the IAB; as well as IAB board members including Kwon Heo, former Director-General of ICHCAP; Eivind Falk, Director of the Norwegian Crafts Institute; and Joanne Orr, a cultural expert from the United Kingdom. The event was reported in the Delhi edition of Malayala Manorama, a leading Malayalam-language daily based in Kerala, India.

The Arirang Master Award:

A Strategic Cultural Diplomacy Platform Rooted in the History of International Cooperation on Intangible Cultural Heritage

Launched in 2023, the Arirang Master Award is far more than a ceremonial prize or an honorary title. It is a strategically designed cultural diplomacy platform grounded in the long history of international cooperation surrounding the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage.

The intellectual and institutional lineage of this initiative can be traced back to the early 2000s. During that period, the Government of the Republic of Korea, in cooperation with UNESCO, presented the Arirang Prize on several occasions as part of global efforts to protect intangible cultural heritage. These early awards represented an important attempt to raise international awareness of living traditions and to formally recognize the artists and cultural communities who had sustained them.

Despite their symbolic and diplomatic significance, these initiatives were later discontinued by mutual agreement between the Korean government and UNESCO. This decision was not due to conceptual shortcomings, but rather to institutional and procedural changes in UNESCO’s safeguarding frameworks and operational systems. While the original Arirang Prize came to an end, the underlying question—how to meaningfully recognize living heritage practitioners at the international level—remained unresolved and highly relevant.

This historical context gained renewed resonance when Arirang was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Arirang is not merely a folk song; it embodies universal human experiences shaped by hardship, separation, endurance, and recovery. Sung across the Korean Peninsula and beyond, Arirang has long transformed sorrow into collective strength. It conveys a deeply human conviction: that suffering can be endured together, and that dignity can be preserved through memory and solidarity.

At its core, Arirang carries an ethic of coexistence. Sung at moments of departure, conflict, and remembrance, it communicates—quietly yet unmistakably—messages of reconciliation, empathy, and peace. This emotional and ethical resonance has enabled Arirang to transcend national borders, functioning as a cultural language through which different communities recognize the pain, hopes, and aspirations of others.

Building upon this foundation, Culture Masters has reinterpreted the spirit of Arirang not as a fixed national symbol, but as a global value oriented toward cultural resilience and peaceful exchange. The Arirang Master Award positions intangible heritage practitioners not as passive preservers of the past, but as active cultural agents who connect heritage to the present and the future through practice, education, and dialogue.

As of December 2025, more than thirty artists from twenty-one countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Oceania have been designated as Arirang Master Award recipients. Alongside official recognition, they are connected to a range of platforms that support documentation, dissemination, and international exchange, including Arirang Culture Connect and an expanding digital media initiative.

Living Culture, Created and Shared Together

The forms of sponsorship and collaboration proposed by Culture Masters are not burdensome obligations nor symbolic gestures. Rather, they invite participation in a shared cultural experience—seeing, listening, exchanging, and creating together. Culture is not an object of consumption, but a living relationship that grows through engagement.

Culture Masters prioritizes practical and accessible platforms over abstract visions. A flagship outcome of this approach is Arirang Culture Connect, a specialized online newspaper dedicated to intangible cultural heritage. Through sustained, field-based journalism, it has amplified the voices of heritage practitioners and communities around the world, bringing them into international cultural discourse.

Importantly, content produced through Arirang Culture Connect does not remain confined to single publications. Articles are cited, translated, and recontextualized by national media, cultural journals, and international news platforms, generating second- and third-level dissemination. Through this process, local traditions enter broader cultural conversations and are reinterpreted across diverse social and cultural contexts.

Complementing this work, the CM+TV Culture Masters YouTube channel is being developed as a visual extension of these archival and narrative efforts. Performance recordings, interviews, oral knowledge archives, and intercultural dialogue content are being produced in stages, translating in-depth journalistic work into more immediate and accessible visual experiences.

For sponsors and partner institutions, participation in these platforms represents far more than visibility. By accompanying meaningful cultural narratives as they cross borders, languages, and media, collaboration becomes an engaging and productive form of cultural participation.

Recognition Framework and a Phased International Vision

At the core of Culture Masters’ recognition system is the Arirang Master Award. The award honors intangible cultural heritage practitioners based on artistic excellence, creative continuity of tradition, and sustained commitment to education and transmission. It operates under the auspices of the International Advisory and Directors Board (IAB), within a structured nomination and evaluation process that includes national cultural institutions, thereby ensuring credibility and cultural coherence.

Moving beyond recognition alone, Culture Masters is advancing a phased roadmap for international exchange. In 2026, a World Intangible Heritage Pilot Gathering will be held, designed not as a large-scale spectacle but as a practice-oriented experimental model. In the same year, the Suwon Cultural Forum will convene artists, scholars, cities, and institutions to engage in dialogue on the future of intangible heritage and international cultural cooperation.

Building on these experiences, a vision has been articulated to launch the World Intangible Heritage Grand Festival (WIN Grand Festival) in 2028. This initiative aims to function as a global cultural platform integrating artistic practice, education, media, and policy dialogue, while rejecting rigid hierarchies in favor of sustainable and horizontal exchange.

Future Challenges and Proposals: Sustaining Dialogue Within the UNESCO Framework

Recent discussions within a subcommittee of the International Advisory Board revisited the history and discontinuation of the original Arirang Prize. Participants emphasized the need for initiatives inspired by the spirit of Arirang to continue within, or in dialogue with, UNESCO-related discussion frameworks in a more sustainable manner.

In particular, proposals were raised to reexamine the concept and experiences of the Arirang Prize in contemporary terms in connection with meetings of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (IGC). Such an approach is grounded in respect for existing safeguarding systems and institutional realities, and calls for a gradual, cautious, and consultative process.

Accordingly, the IAB has agreed to continue internal deliberations and coordination, contributing on an ongoing basis to the exploration of new possibilities for international recognition and cooperation.

The Strategic Value of Sponsorship and Partnership

Collaboration with Culture Masters represents solidarity with an international cultural initiative rooted in UNESCO values and ethical cultural practice. Through Arirang Culture Connect and the expanding CM+TV platform, partners gain international visibility linked to authenticity, cultural dignity, and social responsibility.

More importantly, sponsors and partners become active contributors to a cultural ecosystem that ensures intangible heritage practitioners and communities are not marginalized in the process of globalization. Within this ecosystem, culture functions as a living resource for innovation, dialogue, and peace.

Conclusion: Joining a Cultural Journey Toward Peace

The Arirang Master Award initiative demonstrates that heritage remains alive when recognition leads to opportunity, and when values are translated into action. Grounded in the history of the Arirang Prize and the human meanings embedded in Arirang itself, the award transforms memory into responsibility and tradition into dialogue.

Supporting and partnering with Culture Masters means joining a peaceful cultural journey in which living heritage becomes a bridge connecting communities, cities, and nations. Along this journey, culture ceases to be a boundary and instead becomes a pathway toward understanding and solidarity.