A Silla king tried to move his capital to Daegu in 689 and failed
Daegu, the third-largest urban area in South Korea, once came close to being a royal capital. In 689 King Sinmun of Silla planned to shift his court there from Gyeongju, a scheme known only from one line in an old chronicle and probably blocked by the entrenched Gyeongju aristocracy.
People farmed the Daegu basin long before any kingdom claimed it. Excavations have turned up many villages and graves of the Mumun pottery period, roughly 1500 to 300 BC, including some of the oldest Mumun settlements in the Gyeongsang region. At Dongcheon-dong a Middle Mumun village of about 850 to 550 BC preserves pit-houses alongside the outlines of its fields, and dolmens, the stone burial monuments of the era, are plentiful around the city.
Chronicles of the Proto-Three Kingdoms period describe a walled chiefdom here called Dalgubeol, which Silla had swallowed by the fifth century at the latest; traces of its rampart survive in Dalseong Park. After Silla unified the peninsula with Tang Chinese help, Sinmun's abortive plan followed, recorded in the Samguk sagi compiled by Kim Pusik. The present name was granted in 757. Late-1990s digs at Dongcheon-dong exposed a fortified Silla compound of 39 raised-floor buildings behind a ditch and palisade, probably a permanent barracks, while Siji-dong yielded a large village of the sixth and seventh centuries.
During the Later Three Kingdoms, Daegu first sided with Later Baekje. In 927 the Battle of Gong Mountain, fought on the city's northern edge, saw Wang Kŏn's Goryeo army routed by Kyŏn Hwŏn, and Wang Kŏn escaped only because his general Sin Sung-gyŏm sacrificed himself. Brutality by the victors seems to have turned local opinion toward Wang Kŏn, who went on to rule Goryeo. Under Joseon the city served as capital of Gyeongsang, one of the eight traditional provinces.
Today more than 2.3 million people live in the metropolitan city, which sits about 80 kilometres from the sea beside the Geumho and Nakdong rivers, and together with surrounding North Gyeongsang the region counts over 5 million. From the 1960s to the 1980s Daegu drove national growth, earning the nickname Textile City for its dominant trade. Its humid subtropical climate grows fine apples, hence Apple City, and a free economic zone now steers it toward fashion and high technology.
Source: Daegu
