Researchers of the Pyongyang University of Fine Arts have recently resorted and updated the masks which were used in Pongsan mask dance, one of the typical traditional songs and dances of the Korean people.

The Pongsan mask dance, which was one of the legacies of national dances created and enjoyed by people from antiquity in the area centring on today’s Pongsan, North Hwanghae Province, reflected the peasants’ desire for happiness and resistance against feudal rulers.

Thanks to the policies of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the state on actively preserving national heritages and developing them to suit the aesthetic sense of the contemporary times the Pongsan mask dance is widely staged in the countryside of Korea today.

Researchers of the Juche-oriented fine art institute of the university buckled down to the work of restoring and updating the Pongsan masks in concerted efforts to further develop traditional folk dances our people liked.

They studied the material on and photos of national cultural legacies and deepened their research with the help of institutions in charge of preservation of historical and cultural legacies and specialist in the sector of culture and art.

In the course of it, they clarified the characteristic of the Pongsan masks and the characters in the dance, and, on the basis of it, introduced skin colour into some masks while retaining their original shapes.

And they have resorted and updated 22kinds of masks in formative and artistic way, while preserving the humorousness of the Korean masks in the overall description of Pongsan masks.

The restoration and updating of the Pongsan masks will make it possible to reliably carry forward the fine traditions of folk art handed down historically.

[The news from Uriminzzokiri]