Petroglyphs along the Bangucheon Stream

For roughly six millennia — from about 5,000 BCE into the 9th century CE — successive peoples carved images into the cliff faces flanking the Bangucheon Stream near Korea's southeastern coast. The panels at Daegok-ri and Cheonjeon-ri, worked with stone and later metal tools, hold whales, hunters, animals and abstract signs in dense concentration, one of East Asia's great rock-art archives. UNESCO inscribed the roughly three-kilometre stretch as World Heritage in 2025.