Throughout this donation, 20,000 more pieces of folklore materials that were collected by the founding father of the Southern area folkloristics, the late professor JI of the Department of Korean Language and Literature at Chonnam National University, were donated to the Office for Hub City of Asian Culture in Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. This was made possible by professer JI's wife, KIM Yong-Suh, the honorary professor at Chonnam National University, with her hope for his work to be shared with as many as people possible at Asian Culture Complex which will be completed in 2014.

The late professor JI was born in Hampyeong Chonnam in 1931. From year 1960 he recognized a precious value of traditional culture and contributed with great devotion in development of folkloristics and intangible cultural asset while he worked at Chonnman National University for about 40 years. He particularly was interested in a cultural heritage of Korea, Japan and East Asia, and this made him a very well-known folklorist who has collected the most site materials in Korea.

Professor JI had excavated various folk games and recovered the authenticities of many forgotten folk materials. Great portion of folk materials from this donation were collected from year 1960 to 2009 before he passed away at home and abroad including Honam area. At present, passing down of these folk materials are severed or a passing down scene can no longer be seen. The amount of 20,888 donated items, consist not only site investigation pictures, videos, recordings, but also many text materials such as investigation notes.

Collections by the past professor JI are great assets for the Gwangju Hub City of Asian Culture to enrich its diverse colors of Asian Culture. These collections will be served as illustrative examples about Korean cultural identity from Asian people and even people from all over the world once Asian Culture Complex is open.