Ulsan Rock Carvings

The UNESCO-registered Ulsan Rock Carvings are valuable materials that tell the story of whale hunting from approximately 7000 years ago, and are important evidence of human and maritime history.

Located in Ulju County, Ulsan Metropolitan City, these rock carvings date back to the Neolithic to Bronze Ages. Since its discovery in 1971, they have been designated National Treasure No. 285. Furthermore, this site is the world's oldest whaling site with a whale hunting theme, and was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on July 12, 2025.

The Bangdaeam-gakwa Rock Carvings Site in Daegu-ri, Ulsan, located in Ulsan Metropolitan City, is a site where prehistoric images are carved into a vertical rock slab approximately 8m wide and 3m high on a steep cliff beside the Daegu Stream, a tributary of the Taehwa River in Ulsan.

It is the oldest prehistoric rock art site discovered in Korea and contains approximately 300 drawings. Among the drawings, a highly realistic painting of a whale hunt was created during the Neolithic Age about 7000 years ago and is considered to be the oldest whale hunting drawing on earth.

The road to Ulsan's rock carvings

Although there are some terrestrial creatures such as cows, tigers, leopards, deer and wild boars, marine life, especially whales, appears most frequently. Despite being primitive murals, the depictions of whales are extremely detailed, and by species, they include a gray whale carrying a calf on its back, a whale with different colors on its front and back (a killer whale), an unusually large humpback whale with many vertical stripes, and a sperm whale with a distinctive mouth and head.

It also contains content related to whale hunting, depicting bait, nets, harpooned whales, and boats setting out to catch the whales. It gives a detailed depiction of over a dozen men boarding long wooden boats to throw harpoons at the whales, dragging them away, and stripping them of their meat.

For this reason, academics believe that this rock painting was created for the purpose of teaching whaling education during the Stone Age to Bronze Age, when there was no written language. It was designated a National Treasure in 1995.

Ulsan Rock Carving Museum