The Dolmens and Menhirs of Korea

This presentation was given at the XIVth Annual Conference of La Société Européene pour la Astronomie dans la Culture (SEAC)/The European Conference for Astronomy in Culture in conjunction with Oxford VIII. That joint conference was held April 6-10, 2006, in Rhodes, Greece. The talk summaries the results of the fieldwork and interviews that I carried out in South Korea in the summer of 2005. It contains information concerning folk beliefs relating to the megalithic sites that has not been reported previously. The vast number and variety of dolmens that are found in South Korea should be of interest to those who investigate European megalithic sites. Until now no comparative work has been carried out that would examine the similarities and differences between the megaliths in these two geographical locations, much less the reasons that menhirs continue to be constructed and utilized today in this region of the world, namely, South Korea.