Making Mt. Namsan an “Open-Air Museum” : The Heritage Practices of Local Cultural Communities in 1950s-90s Gyeongju

This article examines the heritagization process of how the performances and practices of local communities and people in Gyeongju contributed to the creation of Mt. Namsan in Gyeongju as a natural and cultural open-air museum through a historical geographical approach to cultural landscape. During the Park Chung-hee regime, Mt. Namsan was a space organized around selected points and the lines connecting them, i.e., ruins that were considered important in the construction of national history and the roads that connected them. In 1985, the entirety of Mt. Namsan was designated a historic site, which led to the transformation of this point- and line-centered spatial organization into an area-centered one. In addition to the institutional change, the activities of local cultural communities and local people played an important role in the spatial reconfiguration of Mt. Namsan. They were the main actors who carried out and practiced the heritage of Mt. Namsan from the 1950s to the 1990s. Their activities laid the foundation for the transformation of Mt. Namsan into an “open-air museum” that bears the imprint of Silla, a multifaceted and multilayered pilgrimage site where points, lines, and planes intersect.