Dr. O Young Lee - Advisor of Joong Ang Daily - Former Minister of Culture, Korea - Professor Emeritus, Ewha Womans University, Korea
	Mr. Jose Ramos Horta - Senior Minister for External Affairs and Information, East Timor - Winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Peace
	Dr. Hongnam Kim - Director of the National Folk Museum of Korea - Professor, Dept. of Art History, Ewha Womans University, Korea
	Dr. Makio Matsuzono - Director of the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan Intangible Cultural Heritage as Spiritual Embodiment

	Dr. Dawnhee Yim - Professor of Anthropology, Dongguk University, Korea - International Jury, Intangible Heritage, UNESCO
	Dr. Richard Kurin - Director of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. DC, USA. - Supervisor of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

Living in the realm of natural and social environments, people create both tangible and intangible heritage formations that express the continuity of life in all its diversity.

It is widely acknowledged that museologists across the world have so far paid great attention to collecting, preserving, researching, exhibiting and exchanging tangible objects, both cultural and natural, in establishing museums as places for research, community development, heritage interpretation and public education.

Culture manifests itself not only in tangible forms but also through intangible elements. It is transmitted from generation to generation by means of language, music, theatre, attitudes, gestures, practices, customs and a whole range of other forms of mediation, as well as objects and places in which the ideas of human beings are located.

The unique cultural heritage of the different parts of the world is made in the process of invention, dissemination, acculturation and evolution. Intangible cultural heritage, for example, includes voices, values, traditions, languages, oral history, folk life, creativity, adaptability and the distinctiveness of a people popularly perceived through the manifestations of cuisine, clothing, shelter, traditional skills and technologies, religious ceremonies, manners, customs, performing arts, storytelling and so on.

The worldwide museum community now recognizes that it will have to pay significant attention to intangible cultural heritage as well as tangible resources by fostering interdisciplinary approaches. In the preservation of the totality of heritage resources, museums should continue to further their core business of collection, preservation, research, exchange, exhibition and education.

The theme 'Museums and Intangible Heritage' of the ICOM 2004 SEOUL will help to promote the cultural identities of all regions in the world and to understand the cultural diversity in the global society. By doing so, we will be able to contribute to an era of peace and community-building.