How many Korean people know the Bangudae Petroglyphs? How many Korean people know the reservoir after a dam was constructed for city water supply made the petroglyphs dangerously ruined under water? How many people know the value of petroglyphs 6000 to 7000 years old? No monetary value can be assessed, because the art works in the rock panels are the oldest ones in human history. Whaling scenes in the rocks are still vividly beautiful sculptures. The first whaling people lived in the southeast seashore of the Korean Peninsula. We should protect the Bangue Petroglyphs with all our efforts, but no serious actions have been made. Drinking water supply to the Woolsan people is the prime task over the protection of pre-historic cultural heritage of humankind.

My friend and poet, Lee Geon-chong, organized a unique poetry-art show as a campaign to educate people for protection and preservation of the Bangudae Petroglyphs. I am honored to join 35 other poets he invited for their new poems match-able to significant art works in the rock panels, whales and animals in the petroglyphs. The exhibit of poetry-art ensemble is going to the public in the Bangudae Petrophyphs Educational Center near Bangudae. Senior Korean poetess Kim Nam-jo participated with her poem on whales. My poem is Wolf.

The organizing committee assigned wolf to me. All poets who participated in this exhibit should calligraphy their poems with their own blushes with black ink on rice paper. I am only poet outside Korea due to my environmental policy advocacy role. As a matter of fact, I introduced his poetry book , In Front of Bangudae Petroglyphs, to the Korea Times years ago. I have been signaling the danger of this pre-historic cultural heritage for the human kind to the United States , but in vain so far. I have been still trying to reach the Smithonian Institution and the National Geographic to the Bangudae Petroglyphs. We, as human beings, should protect our historic heritage beyond the national boundary line.
I traveled to Peru and saw Nazca Lines and Petroglyphs. From the trip, I produced a series of poems from Peru which included Nazca Line published in the Literature Consciousness in its winter issue of 2015. Nazca Line was a mysterious art work on the Peru desert land. It could only be seen from sky, so I took Cessna to see it from above. It attracted tourists from the world. Archeologists and anthropologists estimated that the Nazca Line was drawn 2000 years ago as a possible religious service of Nazca people to God. A hummingbird, a spider, a killer whale, flowers, trees and an astronaut-looking man were among the twelve petroglyphs figures. One long line was 20 km. Total length of lines and curves made more than 1000 km. Why they were drawn in the desert is only guessable, disputable, and will remain so.

Bangudae art works are known as 6000-7000 years old. Some said they were done between 6000 and 3500 years ago. Unlike Nazca, there was no known civilization around Bangudae. However, I can imagine that Bangudae was where a river met the sea where all kinds of wild animals flourished and later human beings settled down. Whales were there long before human beings appeared on the Earth. The Bangudae art works are more than whales; all kinds of sea and land wild animals and fish. But whales and whale hunting boats and tools attracted most of our attention.

Rock arts are 304 on a group of rocks on a branch of River Taewha flowing into the East Sea. The engravings of whales, deer and wolf were made in most cases by carving out the body, while those of land animals mostly consist of outlines and patterns drawn on the rock surface. The human figures are side views of the whole body with a somewhat exaggerated penis or front images of people with mask-like faces spreading their four limbs. There are engravings of people hunting animals with a bow, raising their hands, and playing a long rod like a musical instrument, recalling hunting and religious acts.
Bangudae petroglyphs are a collection of stone-aged men’s life in the seacoast wilderness, but their whaling is the masterpiece on the rock arts. Whales must be their major source of food, oil and other necessary nutrition.

My poetic imagination naturally extends to Namsan, Kyungju, South Mountain of Kyungju, where all kinds of Buddha were engraved on the mountain rocks by Silla people between the sixth to ninth century. The mountain as a whole is a museum.
Who knows? Silla Kingdom was originated from Bangudae and advanced by whale hunters to Kyungju. But I am sure Bangudae people were the first whale hunters of human history. Most probably, this site was the worship place of the prehistoric people for harvesting whales and other sea and land animals. We have to explore the lost civilization around Bangudae. Whale is a common figure in the seaside Bangudae and desert Nazca Petroglyphs, strange to say, at the least.

I wrote my own Bangudae Petroglyphs before. Here is my poem in English.


Bangudae Petroglyph

The prehistoric people engraved their activities on the stone face, The petroglyph.
They lived in a settlement,
Domesticating wild animals in the wooden fences,
Whaling in the sea from a boat with harpoons and nets,
And, then they carved whaling excitement on the stone surface.

Their wisdom created the first whaling act in the history of mankind,
Helped their sea-bound life to be richer.
The East Sea must have been the very first whale fishery.
The whaling offered them vital nourishment as well as lighting lamp oil.
These particular petroglyphs revealed that the first human settlement was just where the river met the East Sea.

A thousand years later the people of the Silla Kingdom sculptured an image of the Buddha in the grotto.

Bangudae petroglyphs turned out to be so unique in the cultural heritage, nowhere else can be seen.

The practice of carving in the dark cave reached the shore of the Atlantic Ocean many centuries later.

The vitality shown by the early whalers is still afresh
Although it has been being washed by the waves over and over.
They are asking now who hunted the whale to the danger of extinction, the precious species.

We cherished the sea as our own front yard,
Loved a whale pod,
Did not overfish them,
Treasured the scenery of the shore and the art of engraving.

We still claim those as ours.

<By Yearn Hong Choi >