This study focuses on the increasing use of street dance programs in local festivals and aims to identify the background of their growth, utilization effects, and future directions based on the experiences and perceptions of street dance professionals. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with eleven experts involved in festival planning, judging, and performance, and the data were analyzed through open, axial, and selective coding. The findings indicate that the growth of street dance in local festivals was driven by increased media exposure and the development of community-based professional networks. These factors contributed to regional revitalization, audience expansion, broadening the cultural base of street dance, and the formation of compensation structures. However, structural limitations were also identified, including poor performance environments and gaps between festival operation systems and genre-specific expertise, which hinder sustainability. This study demonstrates that street dance functions not merely as performance content but as a participatory cultural resource within local festivals. Furthermore, it highlights the need for stable financial support, collaborative systems with specialized personnel, and long-term operational strategies.

The purpose of this study is to provide basic data that can serve as a guideline for understanding and interpreting the current state of Korean street dance by examining the inflow and development of Locking dance in Korea.

As research methods, interviews with three Locking experts were conducted and each interviewee’s responses were thematically categorized for the analysis of the study. As a result, Locking dance was introduced to Korean people firstly through video materials such as movies, broadcasts, and dance videos from abroad, and later by inviting well-known dancers from different countries to Korean dance competitions as judges. The introduction to Locking dance in Korean society motivated some Korean dancers to invite, various Locking dancers from across the world to Korea for dance workshops, which gave those who learned Locking dance only by watching videos the opportunity to experience the “original” Locking style. Since then, Locking dance in Korea has been more developed through the steady exchanges between Korea dancers and dancers from other countries. Currently, the number of Locking classes, workshops, and events in Korea has drastically increased.

This paper examines the implications of the current status of street dance in Korea, which is rapidly growing aided by institutionalization in the cultural industry and education market. This study begins with the researchers' recognition that situations requiring a clearer definition of street dance-related terms frequently occur. We interviewed street dancers from various positions to figure out the practical uses and perceptions on street dance terms. In order to illuminate the theoretical significance of the emphasis on stylized sub-genres, which was emerged as a core theme during the coding process, we refer to Paul DiMaggio's sociological study on classification in art. The findings are summarized as follows. First, various classification systems evolved as street dance in Korea transformed first emerging as amateur popular dance, moving on to cultural industry, finally arriving as professional art. Second, specific sub-genres are increasingly hierarchical, universally recognized, and ritually bordered, the pattern of which suggests a canonization. However, even during the institutionalization and canonization, street dance reveals complexities that do not fit into a static classification system.