Vernacular martial arts (VMA) occupy a special niche within the diverse phenomena classified as martial arts. Cross-culturally, “Martial arts can be defined as systematic bodies of knowledge, belief, and practice that are associated with methods of attack and defense against … adversaries” (Green and Svinth, 2010, p. 331). On close examination, we learn that the behaviors we attempt to gather under this umbrella term are quite diverse, ranging from life-and-death struggles through rule-governed sporting contests to expressive forms, from globalized combat sports to localized martial culture. The systems that fall on the latter end of this spectrum I have applied the VMA label to, and among the various martial expressions these are the ones that most clearly qualify as intangible cultural heritage (ICH). The following distinctions are useful for the current discussion.

Nowadays, the three-dimensional (3D) data acquisition and modeling technology, which has been evolving from the late 1900s to recent years, is a useful geometric documentation tool for cultural heritage and accumulating numerous cultural heritage digital data. In the Republic of Korea, attempts have been made to build 3D cultural heritage data by several companies since the introduction of 3D scanners in the late 1990s. From the early 2000s, the Cultural Heritage Administration (CHA) in Korea also began to lead the project to record cultural heritage using digital technology, including 3D scanning. Although 3D scanning has been getting essential to every documentary project ordered by government agencies, local governments, and cultural heritage agencies, the process and the results were not strictly standardized. To overcome the problematic issues caused by this, the CHA decided to publish a guideline for records of cultural heritage using 3D scanning. The first version was published in 2015 and a revised version in 2018. In this paper, the issues discussed in the development phase of the guidelines are introduced, and lessons learned are given. Revision of the guidelines for 3D scanning of cultural heritage Prior to the production of guidelines for three-dimensional scanning, the Cultural Heritage Administration had produced standardization and production guidelines for digitalization in metric survey projects. “Guideline for building standardized data in the cultural heritage documentation projects” published 2000 includes standardization guidelines for data submitted, such as naming convention, the hierarchy of the files, data backup, quality management, and outcome management. “Guideline for the precise metric survey of historical architectures” includes essential issues for the metric survey mainly for historic buildings with 3D scanning and GPS technology.