Cultural Heritage is the legacy of our cherished treasure and resources that embody the spirit and wisdom of our ancestor. There is no doubt that the cultural heritage links the past and present. Fortunately, recently, scholars and the public pay attention to the importance of cultural property and the need of the conservation. However, even though the public agreed to importance of conservation of our precious cultural heritage in its original condition to bequeath to future generation, we were not far-sighted enough to think of the crime prevention against cultural property or cultural heritage.
The purpose of this research is to review the current maintenance policy and status quo of the cultural property in terms of its target hardening for protection and crime prevention. In the context, we accomplished the literature review such as the related law in Korea and other specific policy and guideline of other countries and on-site survey to check the status of the safety of the cultural property in Korea.
The “Cultural Heritage Protection Act” defines the range of the cultural property and shows the basic principles of protection of cultural heritages with the duties of state and/or local governments. According to the “Cultural Heritage Protection Act”, it classifies the cultural heritage into state-designated heritage, city/province-designated heritage, cultural heritage materials, registered cultural heritage, undesignated cultural heritage. Besides, we included the criminal behavior and type of crime against cultural property with the reason of the cultural property crime in the context as well as current security system of it. In addition to the literature review, we reported the result of implemented on-site survey for the city parks which have cultural property in Seoul. For the on-site investigation for cultural park, we uated the safety level of the parks focusing on the CPTED(Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) principles using a “Cultural Heritage Safety Checklist” developed by our research team. The findings from the filed study is showing in the context. In addition to the on-site survey for the cultural parks, we introduced the museum security and safety tip to prevent criminal behavior and safety accident in the buildings. As reviewing the type of crime happened in the museum, we introduced the “Museum Maintenance Handbook” and “Handbook on Emergency Procedure in Museum” prepared by International Committee on Museum Security(ICMS) and International Council of Museums(ICOM). Moreover, other cultural protection policy and/or law of other countries such as U.K. France, U.S.A, Japan, China, and UNESCO shown in the report are shown in the context as well.
Based on the literature review and our on-site survey, we emphasize the necessity of practical change on the “Cultural Protection Act” and the detailed rule/code related to the maintenance and operation of the cultural property(heritage). For the appropriate change, we suggest protection strategies to include crime/disaster preventive factors. And we believe that the CPTED principles could provide a desirable crime preventive idea. More detailed research fidnings and policy implications will be discussed in the context.