"In Andong, NewJeansnim's Thumping DJ Set and Seowon Completed by Their Scenery Are Both Right" [Digging Travel]

How Andong Preserves World Heritage
The World Heritage Festival in Andong runs through the 25th at Bongjeongsa, Dosan, Byeongsan, and Hahoe
Performances, media art, and meditation test how heritage can be more than something to see - a place to stay

Pillars of fire shot up in the courtyard in front of Daeungjeon Hall at Bongjeongsa Temple.

DJ NewJeansnim performed at the eve-of-festival event for the World Heritage Festival in the courtyard in front of Daeungjeon Hall at Bongjeongsa Temple in Andong. Flames shot up from both sides of the stage in time with the electronic music, transforming the night at the thousand-year-old temple into a modern concert venue. Artist Kim Ki-hoon

When NewJeansnim, dressed in gray monastic robes, began DJing, electronic sounds rang through the thousand-year-old temple. Beats replaced the wooden fish, and large LED screens lit up the ancient eaves. It was a night that felt more like a DJ set than a Buddhist service, and more like a concert venue than a temple.

The words “World Heritage” somehow seem as if they should come with a “Do Not Touch” sign. But the 2026 World Heritage Festival in Andong, which opened on October 9, asks the opposite: “If we want to preserve these places for a long time, why not try using them a little differently?”

Jeongyodang, the central lecture hall of Dosan Seowon, is where scholars who carried on the teachings of Toegye Yi Hwang studied and debated. It symbolizes the seowon’s original purpose as a place of learning. Writer Kim Kihoon

Hahoe Village, Bongjeongsa Temple, Dosan Seowon, and Byeongsan Seowon. Visit all four over two days and one night, and you will notice an interesting contrast. Music plays at the temple, old sijo poems are sung again at the seowon, and performances are held in traditional houses. At night, lasers and lights come on. The festival’s somewhat challenging theme, “World Heritage of Reflection, Future Value of Convergence,” can be reframed on-site as a much simpler question.

How far can we go in having fun with World Heritage? Bongjeongsa is a good test case. The decisive reason that “Sansa, Buddhist Mountain Monasteries in Korea,” which includes Bongjeongsa, was inscribed on the World Heritage List was not simply that it has many old buildings. UNESCO focused on the fact that these mountain monasteries remain “living religious spaces,” where Buddhist practice and faith continue to this day as part of monks’ everyday lives.

That is why NewJeansnim’s DJ set draws attention, but the programs that are actually closer to the character of Bongjeongsa come afterward: spending a night at the temple, meditating at Manseru Pavilion, and walking along the temple paths. A performance can be moved to another stage. But the experience of doing nothing for a while in the courtyard of a mountain temple after dark is much harder to replicate once you leave Bongjeongsa.

A child participating in a calligraphy activity at the World Heritage Festival held at Dosan Seowon writes the characters stroke by stroke with help from a guardian. It is a scene in which the “learning” of an old Confucian academy continues through a hands-on experience today. Kim Kihoon, writer

At Dosan Seowon, the story changes a little. “Dosan Sibigok,” a series of sijo poems written by Toegye Yi Hwang, is sung anew, and children pick up brushes to write. The media performance “Dosando” and nighttime programs are also on the schedule. But as you walk around Dosan Seowon, a question comes to mind before the performances do.

Why did people in the past build places of study in such scenic locations? In describing “Seowon, Korean Neo-Confucian Academies,” UNESCO identifies their core functions as learning, ancestral rites, and communion with nature. Seowon were built close to mountains and water, with their pavilions left open, because the scenery was considered part of cultivating the mind and body and of learning.

Mandaeru Pavilion at Byeongsan Seowon. The landscape of Byeongsan and the Nakdong River flows through the pavilion's long, open galleries. It illustrates how Joseon-era seowon architecture incorporated nature into study and self-cultivation. Writer Kim Kihoon

At a seowon, then, mountains and rivers are not a backdrop. They are part of the curriculum. This becomes even clearer the next day at Byeongsan Seowon. From Mandaeru Pavilion, the Nakdong River and Byeongsan Mountain appear in framed views between the pillars. There is a frame, but no one painted the picture. The most valuable painting at Byeongsan Seowon, in a sense, is not hanging on a wall.

Byeongsan Seowon also has a distinctive history. After becoming part of the World Heritage site “Historic Villages of Korea: Hahoe and Yangdong” in 2010, it was listed again in 2019 as one of the nine sites in “Seowon, Korean Neo-Confucian Academies.” It is a two-time World Heritage site.

Visitors at Byeongsan Seowon in Andong are learning about the academy’s history and architectural culture while listening to a guide. Photo by Kim Gihoon.

The festival has also brought a concert, “Pungnyu Byeongsan,” a laser show, “Peace Remembered by Byeongsan,” and an ancestral rite experience to the site. The ability of contemporary programming to draw people to heritage sites is clear. But standing in front of Byeongsan Seowon, another, somewhat paradoxical thought arises: it is even harder to add anything to a space that is already so perfectly complete. With just a river framed between the pillars, people can sit for a long time.

Last comes Hahoe Village. Here, even the phrase “making use of cultural heritage” calls for a little caution. For some, it is a World Heritage site; for others, it is home, and they still have to step outside the door each morning. UNESCO, too, sees Hahoe’s value as extending beyond a few aristocratic houses. It has recognized the value of the village as a whole: aristocratic and commoners’ homes, pavilions and seowon, mountains and rivers, and the life of the clan community that has continued within this setting.

That is why the festival enters the traditional houses. Small performances and hands-on activities are held at eight sites, including Hwakyungdang, and children take on the role of World Heritage docents. Between Mansongjeong and Buyongdae, the Hahoe Seonyu Julbulnori takes place three times. In this traditional spectacle, lines strung with charcoal powder are set alight, scattering sparks over the Nakdong River.

Park Sunja, a certified practitioner of Andongpo weaving, designated a National Intangible Heritage, and an instructor in the transmission of North Gyeongsang Province Intangible Heritage, demonstrates traditional Andongpo weaving on a loom at Hahoe Village during the 2026 World Heritage Festival in Andong. She brought the traditional textile-making skills she has long practiced in Geumso Village, Imha-myeon, to the festival site to demonstrate them to visitors. Photographer Kim Kihoon

What makes this program especially interesting is that it is not a newly invented attraction. It needs the river, Buyongdae, and the night at Hahoe. It cannot be moved wholesale to another city.

That may be the standard by which to judge a World Heritage festival: not how spectacularly it modernizes the past, but whether its programming would still work if moved to another place. Electronic music and media art can be an inviting entry point for people visiting a heritage site for the first time. But the moment a site becomes nothing more than a backdrop for a performance, the reason it is a World Heritage site begins to fade.

By contrast, listening to Dosan Sibigok at Dosan, looking out at the river from Mandaeru Pavilion at Byeongsan, spending the night at Bongjeongsa, and watching the fire play at Hahoe are experiences that cannot easily be transplanted. Heritage does not borrow programming; the programming is born from the heritage site.

A thatched-roof traditional house in Andong Hahoe Village. The value of Hahoe, a World Heritage site, lies not in any one old house, but in the way of life passed down within the village and its spatial structure. Photographer Kim Gihoon

This year, the World Heritage Festival came to Andong after the Gaya Tumuli, the Petroglyphs along the Bangucheon Stream, and Jeju Volcanic Island and Lava Tubes. What makes Andong interesting is that a historic village, a mountain monastery, and seowon all come together in one city. Ways of living, practicing Buddhism, and learning meet within a few dozen kilometers.

That is why the performances, exhibitions, and hands-on activities organized across four sites over 17 days seem like a single experiment. Does preserving World Heritage well mean putting it in a glass case where no one can touch it? Or does it mean getting people to sit, listen, and walk there again?

Ipgyodang at Byeongsan Seowon. This is the seowon's central space, where Confucian scholars studied and held lectures. Beyond the open hall, Mandaeru, the Nakdong River, and Byeongsan unfold in a single view, conveying the Joseon-era seowon's sense of learning amid nature. Kim Gihun, writer

Sit at Mandaeru Pavilion at Byeongsan Seowon, and the river flows between the pillars. No lasers or LEDs. For hundreds of years, mountains and water have come and gone in the same place. After spending two days visiting Andong’s World Heritage sites, I wonder if the hardest skill involved in caring for the cultural heritage of the future may not be adding something, but knowing what not to touch.

The 2026 World Heritage Festival in Andong runs through October 25.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.