This paper focused on the process that Arirang made it to the UNESCO list and the Arirang businesses spreading across the country since then. And it investigated how the social meaning of Arirang was constituted on the way.It was the late 19th century when Arirang appeared on record firstly, but the dominant discourse of folkloristics has been traced its origin to much earlier than that, and on that base constructed the filiation and developement of each regional variation of Arirangs evolutionally. This research trend to define Arirang as a folk-song has not gone uncontested, but it has grown even stronger after that Arirang listed as a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage. As its background, this paper focused on the interzonal competition for the budget and examined the aspects that Arirang became a song of ruler in the meantime.In short, this paper tried to reveal the irony of Arirang as UNESCO intangible cultural heritage, emphasized its local features as folk song handed down naturally among people on the discursive level, but denied actually current ordinary life of people on the socio-political level. Such irony may be contradictory to the very first intent of the UNESCO convention, but it shows the specific example how the convention is translated and modified in the local socio-political context.