Hwasun Dolmen Site (화순 고인돌공원) | park

 park, dolmen

Hwasun Dolmen Site is home to a prehistoric graveyard that contains over 500 hundred different megaliths located on the slopes of hills following the Jiseok River. These megaliths are gravestones which were created in the 3rd to the 7th century BCE out of large blocks of stone. Megaliths can be found around the globe, but nowhere in such a concentration as in the sites here in Hwasun, Gochang, and Ganghwa.

Hwasun Dolmen features a collection of tight formations in a small areas. Dozens of dolmens have upper stones with more than 100 tons in weight, some extra-large dolmens with 280 tons. A quarry remains to show the process of building dolmens.

The megalithic stone graves provide the earliest archeological evidence of the Korean people's religious practices. Requiring great planning, coordination, and collaboration for their construction, the dolmens served as burial markers for tribal and spiritual leaders as well as the ruling elite. Shaman priests would have conducted ceremonies invoking the spirit of the person buried there to protect the tribe.

The great influence of shamanism in the development of Korean culture is attested to by the fact that the Korean peninsula as a whole has the greatest number of dolmens, with more than 40 percent of the world's dolmens, of any country in the world.

Hwasun Dolmen Park is Historic Site No. 410

Designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2000.