Daegu

Daegu grew where the Geumho River meets the Nakdong, in a basin that made it a natural meeting point for roads across the south-east. Burial mounds at Bullo-dong show that local chiefdoms were established here well before Silla absorbed the area. Its importance became administrative under Joseon, when the governor of Gyeongsang province moved his seat here in 1601 after the Japanese invasions, and a walled town grew up around the offices; the market that became Seomun and the herbal medicine market, trading from 1658, drew merchants from across the country.

The city wall was pulled down in the 1900s and replaced by the ring of streets that still forms the downtown. In 1907 Daegu launched the National Debt Repayment Movement, a public subscription to pay off Korea's debt to Japan, which spread nationally and is commemorated in a central park. Under Japanese rule the city became a rail junction and a centre of textiles, and after 1945 the mills multiplied; Samsung began here in 1938 as a trading company. In the Korean War Daegu stayed inside the Pusan Perimeter and remained in South Korean hands throughout the war.

In February 1960 a student protest in Daegu against the ruling party became one of the first acts of the movement that brought down the government that April. Textiles carried the city through the industrial decades and then declined from the 1990s under foreign competition. A fire on the metro in February 2003 killed almost two hundred people and led to major changes in Korean transport safety rules. The city has since rebuilt its economy around medicine, machinery and education, and hosted the World Championships in Athletics in 2011.

Daegu is the most politically conservative of Korea's large cities and has supplied a striking number of the country's presidents and senior officials; the regional label TK, for Daegu and North Gyeongsang, is national shorthand for that establishment. Residents are conscious of the reputation and of the region's long rivalry with the Jeolla provinces to the west.

The Gyeongsang dialect is spoken here with a strong pitch accent and a clipped delivery that other Koreans find brusque and funny in equal measure. Daegu is also a city of markets and traders, and the habits of bargaining, alley eating and late opening run through daily life. It has an unusual density of theatre: musical theatre in particular has been promoted heavily since the international festival began in 2006, and small theatres cluster in a lane near the downtown.

Religion is visible. Protestant and Catholic missions arrived early — the missionary houses on Cheongna Hill and the brick cathedral in the old centre remain — and Daegu has one of the strongest Christian presences of any Korean city alongside the Buddhist temples on Palgongsan, where students and their parents climb to Gatbawi to pray before the university entrance exam. The city is proud of its apples, its textiles, its baseball team and its heat, which residents discuss with something close to affection.

About 2.3 million people live in Daegu, making it the fourth-largest of the country's metropolitan cities, though the number has fallen steadily for two decades as younger residents move to Seoul and to the newer industrial cities. Most people live in apartment blocks spread across the basin floor; Suseong in the south-east is the sought-after district, known nationwide for the concentration of cram schools around its lake.

Textiles remain part of the economy but no longer define it. Machinery, car parts and metal fabrication occupy the industrial estates on the western and southern edges, medical services and research have been deliberately built up around a cluster of hospitals and universities, and a large inland free-trade zone handles distribution for the region. The herbal medicine trade continues on its old street, supplying pharmacies across the country.

Summer shapes the year here more than anywhere else in Korea. Between late July and mid-August the basin holds heat well into the night, streets empty at midday and fill again after dark, when the night market and the riverside parks are at their busiest. The persistent local concerns are the shrinking population, the future of the textile districts, the airport and the military land inside the city, and the cost of cooling a city built in a bowl.

Daegu's cooking is strongly flavoured and cheap, and the city promotes a list of local dishes that appear across its markets and alleys. Makchang, the grilled fourth stomach of beef or pork intestine, is the best-known: eaten with a thick soybean-and-chilli dipping sauce in grill houses that have made one southern street famous for them. Jjimgalbi, beef short ribs braised until soft with garlic and red pepper in a shallow dish, comes from a lane in Dongin-dong and is now served across the country.

Alley food is the other tradition. Napjak mandu are thin, flat dumplings filled mostly with glass noodles and spring onion, fried and eaten with sauce or tossed with spicy rice cakes. Ttaro gukbap keeps the soup and the rice in separate bowls rather than combining them. Muchim-hoe is raw fish dressed with a sharp red-pepper sauce and vegetables, unusual for an inland city. Yukgaejang, the spicy beef and vegetable soup, has a local version thickened with plenty of leek.

Sweet and cold things matter in the heat: shaved ice, iced barley tea, and the apples grown in the orchards around the basin, long a symbol of the city. Chimaek — fried chicken with beer — is celebrated with a midsummer festival in Duryu Park, and the herbal market supplies the ginseng and jujube that flavour the chicken soups eaten on the hottest days of the year.