The National Heritage Administration is working to have the “Danwon High School 4.16 Archive” and other materials related to the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster listed in the Asia-Pacific Register of the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme.
On the 15th, the National Heritage Administration announced that it had submitted an application to the Asia-Pacific Regional Committee on the 12th to have the “Danwon High School 4.16 Archive” and “Suun Japbang and Eumsik Dimibang” included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Asia-Pacific Register by 2026. The final decision on their inclusion will be made at the Asia-Pacific Regional Committee’s general meeting in Indonesia next June. The “Danwon High School 4.16 Archive” contains records of the daily lives of Danwon High School students who were victims of the Sewol ferry disaster, the public’s commemoration activities, and the recovery efforts of bereaved families and survivors. “Suun Japbang and Eumsik Dimibang” are materials on traditional Korean culinary knowledge. Currently, six domestic records are listed in the Asia-Pacific Register: the Korean pyeonaek (hanging wooden plaques), the Petition of Ten Thousand People, the Joseon Dynasty Royal Palace Signboards, the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms, the Naebang Gasa, and the Records of the Taean Oil Spill Recovery.