The Cultural Heritage Administration on Friday signed a contract with MACCA (the Multifunctional Administrative City Construction Agency) to collaborate on a series of projects to digitize Korea’s cultural heritage.

Under the contract, the two institutions will together build a museum that specifically offers digitized heritage exhibitions with 3-D features by the year 2016.

Starting this year, the cultural administration plans to digitize a set of intangible and tangible cultural heritage sites into 3-D holograms.

The heritages include Korea’s traditional “salpuri” dance, the Seokguram Grotto located in the Bulguk Temple in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, and the “Tripitaka Koreana,” ― or “Palman Daejanggyeong” ― a collection of Buddhist scriptures carved onto more than 80,000 wooden printing blocks during the 13th century Korea.

The project ultimately aims to digitally recreate the past sceneries of four ancient capitals of Korea ― Gyeongju, the capital of the Silla Kingdom (57 B.C.-935 A.D.), and Gongju, Buyeo and Iksan ― in 3-D, the cultural administration said.

By Claire Lee (clairelee@heraldcorp.com)