A 6,000-Year Canvas, Carved in Stone — and Fighting to Survive

The landscape surrounding Bangucheon, where the petroglyphs of Ulju-gun are located [Kim Myung-sang]

Clues to the lives of the Korean Peninsula's earliest ancestors survive in Ulsan. The petroglyphs of Bangucheon in Ulju-gun span roughly 6,000 years of human history — from the Neolithic period through the Bronze Age and into the Silla dynasty of the 9th century AD.

Etched with geometric patterns, hunting scenes and inscriptions, the rock carvings are regarded as a masterpiece of prehistoric culture and were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List last July. The site — a kind of time capsule of the Korean Peninsula — draws visitors to this day, offering a striking contrast against the backdrop of modern industrial Ulsan.

Six millennia of images on a natural canvas

Participants in the 8th World Heritage Site Managers Forum visit the Bangudae petroglyphs in Daegok-ri, Ulju-gun, Ulsan. [Kim Myung-sang]

"They haven't been erased. The carvings are just hard to see because the sun isn't hitting them right now."

Park Mi-hyeon, a curator at Ulsan City Hall, called out to the assembled crowd. "For the Bangudae petroglyphs, the light is best between 3:30 and 4:30 in the afternoon. Visitors who come outside that window sometimes think the carvings have been worn away."

"Petroglyphs of Bangucheon" is the collective name for two national treasures: the Bangudae Petroglyphs of Daegok-ri and the Inscriptions and Petroglyphs of Cheonjeon-ri. On the day of the visit, heavy cloud cover kept the sun from breaking through, leaving the carvings nearly invisible. Disappointed murmurs rippled through the crowd.

On Friday, participants in the 8th World Heritage Site Managers Forum visited the Bangudae petroglyphs in Daegok-ri. Some 59 heritage specialists from France, Lithuania, Tanzania and other countries — in Korea for the 48th UNESCO World Heritage Committee session being held in Busan — examined the rock face through telescopes, virtual-image monitors and smartphone cameras. Some zoomed in with their lenses, scanning the screen for figures. When one expert spotted the outline of a whale on a phone display and let out an exclamation, others crowded around to look.

Countless rock faces rise along the Bangucheon basin, but carvings survive in only two places: Bangudae and Cheonjeon-ri. Why prehistoric people chose these two spots alone as their natural canvas remains unknown. The rock surface is divided into 11 panels, with the densest concentration of images clustered in a single area.

The Bangudae petroglyphs of Daegok-ri, Ulju-gun [Provided by the Cultural Heritage Administration]

Park's green laser pointer swept across to a flat expanse of rock on the opposite bank — the kind of smooth surface any artist would instinctively reach for. A natural crack divides the panel into left and right halves. The left side is dominated by marine creatures, and it is here that the world's earliest known record of whale hunting is preserved. More than seven species — including the North Atlantic right whale, the humpback and the gray whale — are rendered in precise detail: carrying calves on their backs, spouting water.

The carvings also depict the entire arc of a hunt: people setting out by boat, harpooning a whale, hauling it in and butchering it. Scenes show crowded vessels and harpoons embedded in whale bodies. Bubble-shaped floats called "bugu," tied to harpoon lines to prevent a whale from diving too deep, are also shown — evidence of sophisticated hunting techniques. Fossil whale bones with harpoon tips embedded in them, unearthed at nearby Neolithic sites including Hwangseong-dong in Ulsan, confirm that the carvings were drawn from life.

"When the clouds clear and the sun comes in, the images come alive like a film. The right side of the crack is where the land animals are concentrated," Park said.

An enhanced image of the carvings at the Bangudae petroglyphs of Daegok-ri, Ulju-gun [Provided by the Cultural Heritage Administration]

Squinting and following Park's laser pointer, shapes gradually emerged from the rock. The information board identified them: tigers, wild boars, deer, wolves — and, among the human figures, an archer drawing a bow and a shaman wearing a mask.

When asked how the central panel had held its form through millennia of weathering, Park pointed upward. A natural rock overhang juts out two to three meters above the carvings, acting as a roof that has shielded the images from the elements.

After leaving their mark here, the prehistoric artists continued their work about five kilometers upstream at Cheonjeon-ri. The Cheonjeon-ri petroglyphs — also a World Heritage site — bear geometric motifs including diamonds and concentric circles, as well as a record of a visit by Sabujiwang, the brother of Silla King Beopheung. "Visitors can zoom in on the images through a telescope, and we have also set up a virtual-image display so the patterns can be examined in detail even on rainy or overcast days," Park said.

Submerged for a month every year

The inscriptions and petroglyphs of Cheonjeon-ri, Ulju-gun [Provided by the Cultural Heritage Administration]

Behind the glory of the Bangucheon petroglyphs — recognized for their "outstanding universal value" as a testament to prehistoric artistic achievement and maritime culture, and inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List last July — lies decades of damage from repeated flooding.

Sayeon Dam, completed downstream on the Daegok Stream in 1965, has no floodgates and a full-capacity water level of 60 meters above sea level. The Bangudae petroglyphs sit between 53 and 57 meters above sea level. When rainfall pushes the reservoir above 53 meters, the lower portion of the rock face goes underwater; at 57 meters, it disappears entirely. The repeated cycle of submersion and drying has eroded roughly 24 percent of the original carvings.

The dispute over how to respond has long been clear-cut. The Cultural Heritage Administration has prioritized conservation by lowering the dam's water level, while Ulsan city stood firm on the grounds that doing so would threaten the city's drinking water supply — Sayeon Dam provides more than 40 percent of it.

Participants in the 8th World Heritage Site Managers Forum view the Bangudae petroglyphs in Daegok-ri, Ulju-gun, Ulsan through telescopes. [Kim Myung-sang]

Various remedies were proposed over the years — rerouting the waterway through a tunnel, building a temporary embankment, installing a movable water barrier — but each was abandoned over concerns about landscape damage or structural safety. A partial fix came in 2014, when authorities began temporarily lowering the reservoir through an intake tower, cutting the average annual number of days the carvings spent underwater from 193 to 38 (based on 2013–2020 figures). Still, a consensus formed that complete flood prevention was needed to stop further deterioration. The decisive push for a permanent solution — installing floodgates on Sayeon Dam — came as part of the campaign to secure UNESCO World Heritage status for the petroglyphs.

"In 2021, under the chairmanship of the prime minister, the Cultural Heritage Administration and Ulsan city agreed to jointly pursue World Heritage inscription and to proceed in parallel with installing floodgates on Sayeon Dam and securing a stable alternative water supply," said Jo Gyu-hyeong, head of the Architectural Heritage Team at the Cultural Heritage Administration. "That cooperation is what made it possible for the Bangucheon petroglyphs to be inscribed as a World Heritage site last year."

The government and the Korea Water Resources Corporation are pursuing a project costing 80.9 billion won ($54.3 million) that will shave about 17 meters off the dam's spillway and install three new floodgates — each 15 meters wide and 7.3 meters tall. Construction is set to begin in the second half of this year, with completion targeted for 2030. Once finished, the dam's normal operating level can be held permanently at or below 48 meters above sea level — below the petroglyphs — reducing the number of days the carvings are submerged to one or fewer per year.

Not all problems are solved, however. Lowering the reservoir will cut its storage capacity by more than half, raising concerns about reduced water supply for Ulsan residents. Heo Min, commissioner of the Cultural Heritage Administration, visited the site that day and was clear about the government's position. "Installing floodgates on Sayeon Dam to regulate water levels and preserve the petroglyphs is the government's basic stance, and Ulsan city shares that view," he said. "The sustainable conservation and management of cultural heritage is only possible when the government, local authorities and various community stakeholders communicate and work together."

Abu Simbel: a compass for conservation

Dismantling work at the Abu Simbel temples in Egypt [Provided by UNESCO]

The battle to save the Bangucheon petroglyphs from water calls to mind the relocation of Abu Simbel in Egypt. In the late 1950s, the Egyptian government drew up plans to build the Aswan High Dam on the upper Nile to combat chronic drought and flooding and to generate electricity. The problem: once completed, the dam would submerge dozens of ancient Egyptian monuments, including the temples of Abu Simbel built by Ramesses II.

UNESCO mobilized to save them. "Although these monuments stand on Egyptian soil, they are part of humanity's shared history and heritage — protecting them is the duty of the entire world," the organization declared, rallying support. More than 50 countries pooled funds and dispatched experts. The result: the massive statues and temple interiors were cut into some 1,000 blocks weighing 20 to 30 tons each and reassembled on a cliff 65 meters higher.

The success of the relocation gave the world wide confidence and a new sense of purpose. It directly inspired the creation of the World Heritage Convention and the World Heritage Committee as they exist today — the origin of the UNESCO World Heritage emblem that travelers now encounter at sites around the globe.

The Bangucheon petroglyphs face a similarly urgent threat. The shared goal that drew heritage experts from around the world to this remote riverbank was the same: to protect a piece of humanity's legacy that could vanish forever through present-day inaction.

Mariela Inkova from Bulgaria was studying an information board when she pointed to a blank stretch of rock and asked why part of the surface had no carvings. Park's reply — "I think you'd have to ask the people who lived here 7,000 years ago" — drew laughter from the crowd.

When a Korean reporter asked Inkova for her impressions of the site, she said Bulgaria faces a similar predicament. "The Madara Rider, a World Heritage site, is suffering erosion from rainwater infiltration, and we still have not found an answer," she said. The Cultural Heritage Administration's decision to open the petroglyphs' plight to international scrutiny was itself a signal: an invitation for the world's experts to search for solutions together.

Leaving with the regret of not having seen the carvings clearly, it was hard not to feel that the 6,000-year record — slowly fading through cycles of flood and drought — is now in a race against time. When the floodgates are finally built, perhaps the petroglyphs will at last be allowed to rest. One can only hope that future generations will still be able to stand before those ancient picture-letters carved by their ancestors, and watch the afternoon sun bring them to life.

terry@heraldcorp.com