Daejeon Highlights: The Underground Shopping Mall
Daejeon is huge by American standards, but it’s still concerned a sleepy town by most Koreans. As part of my series, Daejeon Highlights, I cover the interesting parts of life here in Korea’s 5th largest city. Cause it can be hard to find what’s good here, sometimes.
Today we’re covering the underground shopping mall. Any Korean city with a subway will have one of these—Seoul and Incheon’s are the biggest and best—but Daejeon’s has some unique things in it.
First, you can get here by going to Jungangno, the second-to-last subway stop going towards Panam. Above-ground is the neighborhood Eunhaengdong, home of the Sky Bridge and the famous Sung Sim Dang bakery.
But underneath, you’ll find a underground city of fast fashion, vintage clothes, manicure shops, tailors, jewelry stores, make-up shops—and lots of Korean street food.
I’ve bought a lot of clothes and jewelry here which have lasted me a while. Honestly, while a lot of these clothes are fast fashion, you can find some good stuff if you look. I recommend feeling the fabric with your hands to decide if it’s a good material or not. It’s better if you pay with cash, but there’s no haggling. If you start from Jungangno and head west towards Jungang Yeok, another subway stop, you’ll find vintage thrift shops.
BUT *Billy Mays voice* that’s not all! Here, you’ll also find two other little gems I’m really excited to talk about.
The first is Books and Scent Perfume Workshop 책과향기 향수공방. You can make your own perfume, starting at 15,000 won for 15ml.
The workshop starts by choosing your base perfume from about 80 or so samples. Some are premium, which will be about 2,000 won more. I had to ask the workers for advice because I was as little overwhelmed.
After picking a Chanel perfume base (can’t remember which one but it was #49), we then added up to three notes. You can add a top, middling and bottom note. The top notes were fruit scents, middle were floral and bottom, earthy smells like musk or wood. I chose rose and amber, while my friend picked green tea and jasmine. Agaih, they helped us decide because they knew what blends well together.
After, we picked out our bottles, colors and packaging, and took some pics. The workers were super kind and helpful, even though we had some language barrier. I definitely recommend.
The other place is right across the way. It’s an old school tteokbeokki shop called The Baroque, famous with students.
Their rice cakes are known to be sooooo soft, their texture is like ice cream. So they’re called ice cream tteokbeokki. The sauce is also creamier and richer than most tteokbeokki places.
I recommend their tteokbeokki or rabeokki (ramen tteokbeokki), plus some gimmari (fried noodle rolls). It’ll come with a broth soup and fermented radish. Necessary, given the richness of the tteokbeokki.
The underground is a staple of big Korean cities, and Daejeon’s is a modest addition to that tradition. But hey, if you’re in town, it’s totally worth spending a few hours—and a couple of 만원.