These days, the opening of doors between states through international events is gaining momentum and through these exchanges, the breadth, diversity, and quality of cultural and artistic endeavors are growing. In this respect, I cannot emphasize enough the meaning and value of managing the unique and precious cultural resources we inherit from our ancestors and sharing them outside of our own country.
Leading museums around the world have established permanent galleries of Korean art, but curators have no access to adequate reference materials when writing descriptions for exhibits. Furthermore, there are very few worthwhile texts for students and scholars of Korean culture, even in Korea. By providing English definitions and explanations of terminology for cultural and fine arts artifacts, it is our wish that this book will promote wider understanding of Korean culture and support scholarly research.
The 2, 824 entries in this dictionary are classified into four major categories: archaeology, architecture, art history, and folklore. We have tried to select those terms that are regularly used in ordinary texts and guides to cultural artifacts.