The little port town of Goseong, on the south coast of Korea, is best known to many Koreans for dinosaur footprints, but the green mounds on a ridge above the sea tell an older story. The Songhak-dong tumuli are burial mounds of the Gaya confederacy, a group of small city-states that flourished in the south of the Korean peninsula alongside the better-known kingdoms of Baekje, Goguryeo and Silla, and that were gradually absorbed by Silla in the sixth century. Goseong was the centre of one of these states, usually called Sogaya, and the big round mounds here, laid out in a line above the bay, were the graves of its rulers.
The Gaya were great ironworkers and traders. Their iron ingots and armour were exported to Japan and the Korean kingdoms, and their burial goods, such as elongated pots, horse armour, and finely made ornaments, show a culture linked to the sea routes. The Gaya Tumuli were inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2023, a series of seven sites across southern Korea, of which Songhak-dong is one. Today the mounds form a quiet park, with grass, pines, and a view across the water to the islands of the strait.
The riding along this coast is relaxed and scenic, with rias, islands and fishing villages. The roads wind around bays, climb over low headlands and drop to small harbours, with oyster rafts and nets drying in the sun. Traffic is moderate, with speed cameras common and limits strictly observed. Spring, with azaleas on the hillsides, and autumn, with clear light, are best. Summers are humid and typhoons can arrive in late summer, and in winter the south coast is mild compared with the interior.
Goseong itself has about twenty-seven thousand people, so fuel, food, and accommodation are no trouble, and the larger city of Tongyeong lies a short ride to the east, famous for its seafood and the admiral Yi Sun-sin, who defeated the Japanese navy in the nearby waters in the 1590s. Eat fresh fish, and if you get a chance, try the local sea squirt or oysters, which are part of the region's identity. The Goseong dinosaur museum is an easy side trip.