▲ Retrieving Crown Princess Hyomyeong

On Jan. 20, 2018, a royal document dedicated to Crown Princess Hyomyeong in 1819 to celebrate her wedding with Crown Prince Hyomeyong, is back in Korea 152 years after it went missing. It is written on a set of six bamboo slips. Like that, nowadays, there is lots of cases wherein lots of Korean artifacts have come back. However, there are still lots of artifacts stolen by other countries that are not returned to us.
To start with, I want to talk about cultural properties. Cultural properties can be artifacts, behavior, documents and many others. There are lots of expressions and characteristics in cultural properties, because they contain things that can help people adapt to the environment and lots of aspects and thinks that is influential. In the past, Korea was under lots of countries, so we have lots of our artifacts. Although we have found some of our things and retrieve them, there are still many which are not returned to us. Specifically, the number of cultural heritage of foreign countries confirmed to date is 64,852 in 17 countries. However, they are mainly located in foreign countries, public and private museums, art museums, and universities. There are many cultural assets of the individual collections that have not yet been identified because there is intended to be made public

▲ The values and peculiar characterisitcs of Korean cultures and things.

The values we can find from these artifacts are magnificent. It is because lots of artifacts our ancestors cherished are mostly stolen by wars, Japanese colonial era, and at the end of Joseon Dynasty. We have named artifacts and most of them are praised high. In the international society, there are four categories of objects to be returned to cultural property. Artifacts, when stolen in wars or from graves, theft, colony and occupation, were changed. The Convention on the Prohibition and Prevention of Unlawful Removal of Cultural Property adopted by the 16th UNESCO General Assembly of UNESCO is an international treaty applicable to the second categories of grave or illegally exported cultural property. However, this does not apply retroactively. The return to cultural properties that was spilled at the time of colonization should be resolved through inter-governmental negotiations between interested parties as there is no internationally binding convention.

▲ Korea is the countries which are stolen lots of things by other countries

In conclusion, now, we have not found and retrieved our artifacts. As we also have rights and ownerships, we have to get them back. In addition, people's aspects and thinking have to be changed, and they should realize that all artifacts which they stole, have to be returned to the original owner.

2018.Feb.24 by Kim Min Hyun