[2022 National Audit] "One Safety and Performance Specialist at the Intangible Heritage Center"

Employees on emergency duty every time... Limits to sustainable operation and new project promotion
"Planning and directing experts are essential... Cultural Heritage Administration and Ministry of the Interior must resolve"

There is an urgent need to increase the number of professionals at the National Intangible Heritage Center. One person in the stage sound field is responsible for managing both safety and the performance system.

According to data such as the "Comparison of Stage Arts Professionals by Institution" released on the 10th by Kim Yoon-duk (Democratic Party), a member of the National Assembly's Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee, the Intangible Heritage Center does not have separate safety general managers or dedicated stage arts professionals. Due to the long absence of hiring performance arts directors, the staff in charge suffer from frequent on-call duties. They even applied to the Ministry of Labor for approval of 62 hours of overtime per week.

Rep. Kim pointed out, "There are no full-time civil servants for performance directing, revealing limitations in continuous operation and the promotion of new projects," and added, "Abnormal operations that do not match the scale continue, such as a decline in the quality of performances."

The Intangible Heritage Center is equipped with 3,310 state-of-the-art systems worth approximately 7.7 billion KRW. The safety management area is 1,777㎡, which is seventeen times larger than the National Gugak Center's 111㎡. The workload is 133 times, about eleven times more. However, the management staff is only one person (a planning professional), which is about 1/30 of the required level.

Public interest in intangible culture is steadily increasing. The number of visitors to the Intangible Heritage Center's performances doubled from about 5,900 in 2014 to 10,000 in 2019. The number of rental performances and visitors also increased more than twofold and threefold, respectively.

Rep. Kim urged Choi Eung-cheon, the Commissioner of the Cultural Heritage Administration, saying, "Planning and directing professionals are essential for disaster prevention, safety management, placement of stage arts professionals, and program operation," and requested, "Please actively resolve the staffing issues in cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior and Safety."