Korea’s Prehistoric Whale Carvings Become World Heritage

UNESCO inscribed the Petroglyphs along the Bangucheon Stream on the World Heritage list on 12 July 2025, at the 47th session of the World Heritage Committee in Paris. The site is in the hills west of Ulsan, in the south-east of South Korea, and it became the country’s seventeenth World Heritage property.

Two rock faces

The listing covers two groups of carvings about two kilometres apart on the same stream. The first to be found, in December 1970, was at Cheonjeon-ri. A team from Dongguk University came upon a rock covered with geometric signs, circles, lozenges and wavy lines, together with later inscriptions left by nobles of the Silla kingdom. The following year the same team found the panel at Daegok-ri known as Bangudae.

Bangudae is a smooth cliff about eight metres wide and five metres high, at the foot of a hill by the water. More than 300 figures are cut into it. They were made over a very long time, from around 5000 BC, and the carvings along the stream as a whole continue to the ninth century AD.

The whales

About 70 of the figures are sea animals, and most of those are whales. Several species can be told apart by the shape of the head, the spout or the folds of the throat. One whale carries a calf on its back. Others are shown with harpoons in them, or with floats attached, beside long boats with crews of a dozen or more. Specialists regard the panel as the earliest and most detailed depiction of whaling known anywhere. Tigers, deer, boar, turtles, sea birds and people with bows or masks fill the rest of the rock.

The coast is now some distance away, but the sea once reached further inland, and Ulsan remained Korea’s whaling port into the twentieth century.

A site under water

A dam was built downstream in the 1960s, before the carvings were known. Its reservoir has covered the Bangudae panel for several months of most years, and the repeated soaking and drying has worn the rock. Lowering the water level has been debated for decades, and the listing commits the authorities to a solution.

For travellers

Ulsan is reached from Seoul by KTX. The Ulsan Petroglyph Museum, a building in the shape of a whale, stands at the start of the path and shows a full-size replica. From there a walk of about twenty minutes along the stream leads to a viewing platform, from which the panel is seen across the water through telescopes. Late afternoon light is best. The carvings at Cheonjeon-ri can be approached closely.

The visit fits well with Gyeongju, the old Silla capital, half an hour to the north, and with the Gaya burial mounds, listed in 2023.