A Walk on Daegu’s Geumho Flower Island

Between Paldal Bridge and Nogok Bridge, the Geumho River runs around a piece of land. People now call it Geumho Flower Island. I used to know it simply as Hajungdo, a river island, a sandbar that became more or less visible depending on the water.

When I was a child in Daegu, the river was something to get across. A bridge was a route to the other side. I couldn’t have imagined going to the middle of it to spend an afternoon.

I’d heard the island had been renamed in 2021 after a public naming contest. On November 1, 2025, my family and I stopped by for a walk after a meal. I found that the change went beyond the name. It was still the middle of a river, and people were making a point of going there to spend part of an ordinary day.

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A Place That Keeps You Walking

The island gives you open paths and a broad view. There are few play facilities and no single observation point to make for. The paths simply keep going. Families, couples, runners and people taking pictures shared the same route without it feeling like a busy tourist site.

The spring plantings include rapeseed and barley, and autumn brings cosmos and buckwheat. Our visit was in early November. There were traces of the 2025 Daegu Garden Expo, though the event was already over. I was glad to see it on a day when people came to walk of their own accord.

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How the City Uses the River

The old island flooded regularly, and pollution was an issue when the land was unmanaged. There are now seasonal flowers and aquatic plants downstream intended to help improve water quality. The work made it possible to use a piece of the river people had mostly passed by.

I’ve often thought of Daegu as somewhere people live, and of the river as part of the background to those lives. A place like this gives people a new reason to go out of their way. The change is easiest to see in something as ordinary as an afternoon walk.

We went in for a few minutes and stayed longer than I expected. Looking around at the people who’d done the same, I could see why the place I still thought of as Hajungdo had begun to feel like Geumho Flower Island.