Daejeon

I first saw Taejon on a cold, grey morning in late November 1999. To be perfectly honest, my initial impression of Korea's sixth largest city was far from positive: the ubiquitous apartment buildings, seemingly interspersed only by traffic-clogged roads and shabby looking corner shops, immediately depressed me with their drab uniformity. After travelling for twenty hours to get to Taejon, I was suddenly overcome by the horrible feeling that I had ended up in the Asian equivalent of Hull-perhaps the Lonely Planet's description of the city as a "sterile" place serving merely as a transient stop en route to somewhere else had been correct after all. As I ...  Read the complete review