The Bangudae petroglyphs, a World Heritage site, spend months underwater every year. The heritage administrator has fixed 2030 as the deadline for dam floodgates, but in a changing climate the question is whether draining the water is enough.
Heo Min, administrator of the Korea Heritage Service, said floodgates would be installed at Sayeon Dam by 2030, Kyunghyang Shinmun reported, adding that 'preserving the Bangudae petroglyphs amid climate change requires continued thought.'
광고 문의 · 300×250The petroglyphs along the Daegok Stream in Ulsan depict prehistoric whale hunting and were inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage list last year. Yet whenever the downstream Sayeon Dam rises, the carvings go under.
Between water and heritage
Sayeon Dam supplies Ulsan's drinking water. Floodgates that lower the level would shorten submersion, but reduce storage and strain supply in drought. Observers have long argued that gates must come with alternative water sources.
The heritage service plans to cut submersion days sharply and set up continuous monitoring of the rock face. Construction time, budget, and regional water-allocation talks remain unsettled.
The climate variable
As Heo noted, gates are not the whole problem. When downpours and droughts alternate at extremes, level management itself becomes hard, and rock that repeatedly wets and dries weathers faster. Blocking submersion is not sufficient.
Specialists say measures 'above the water'—microcrack monitoring, moss and algae removal, precise 3D recording—must run in parallel.
A third perspective
Sinophone Bridge Times does not read Bangudae as heritage versus tap water. The people who carved whales into rock seven thousand years ago and the citizen who turned on a faucet this morning simply use the same river. Administration's job is not to let one side win but to build the water sources and timetable that hold both; 2030 is the minimum that promise requires.
