Why Koreans ride the KTX to Daejeon for a fried red-bean bun

The 09:00 KTX out of Seoul Station (서울역, Seoul-yeok) carries a particular kind of passenger on a Saturday: someone with an empty tote and a return ticket, going to Daejeon (대전) for bread and coming straight back. They are not tourists. They are here for a fried bun the size of a fist, and they have already done the math on whether it is worth two hours on a train.

The city that bread put on the map

Daejeon sits an hour south of Seoul, a transit hub most travellers pass through without leaving the platform. Locals have a self-deprecating name for it — nojaem dosi (노잼도시), the no-fun city — a joke that survives mainly because there is one obvious rebuttal to it. That rebuttal is Sung Sim Dang (성심당), a bakery founded in 1956 by a couple who started with a steamed-bun cart near the station and never left town.

The flagship stands in Eunhaeng-dong (은행동), a ten-minute walk from Daejeon Station (대전역) through the old downtown. On weekends the line reaches the corner and folds back on itself. Inside, the sound is trays and tongs — the Korean bakery ritual, where you take a tray at the door, load it yourself, and queue for a register that never stops moving.

The bun that started it

The thing to order first is twigim soboro (튀김소보로), and it is stranger than its fame suggests. A soboro bun is the Korean streusel roll, crumb-topped and soft; someone here in the early 1980s decided to deep-fry it and pack it with red-bean paste. What arrives is crisp on the outside, dense and sweet within, and priced at a little under 2,000 won — small money for a thing people cross a province to buy.

It does not travel as romance. It travels as a paper bag warm enough to fog, eaten on the walk back to the platform before the crust gives up its crackle. Regulars buy one for now, a second for the train, and a third for whoever stayed home.

Why you will only ever find it here

Sung Sim Dang has never opened a branch outside Daejeon. There are several counters within the city — the main store, one inside Daejeon Station, others in the convention centre and a department store — but none in Seoul, and this is stated as policy rather than accident. The refusal is half the appeal: to eat it, you have to come.

The founding was Catholic, and the ethos shows in a habit the shop keeps without advertising it — unsold bread given away at the end of each day rather than discounted or dumped. A line the company still repeats asks that they do only what everyone would think well of.

A city with nothing to do, people say — and then they get off the train for the bread.

What the regulars actually reach for

Beyond the fried bun, the tray fills with things tourists rarely photograph. Buchu-ppang (부추빵), a savoury roll threaded with garlic chives, sells in stacks to people who buy it by the half-dozen. The myeongnan baguette (명란바게트), split and loaded with pollack-roe butter, is the item locals quietly guard as the real reason to come.

In winter and into spring there is ttalgi-siru (딸기시루), a cream cake built with whole strawberries that has, in recent years, produced its own queues and daily limits, with people arriving before opening for a number. By late July it is long gone, which is worth knowing if you are planning ahead: the cake is a January-to-April pilgrimage, the buns are all year.

대전 사람에게 성심당은 빵집이 아니라 약속 장소다.

Going, and the one thing to get right

From Seoul Station the KTX to Daejeon runs frequently and takes about an hour, with a standard fare around 23,700 won; the slower ITX costs less if your timing is loose. From Daejeon Station, walk out toward Jung-gu and Eunhaeng-dong rather than hunting a bus — it is close enough that walking beats waiting. Come on a weekday morning if you can; by Sunday afternoon the line is the event and the popular trays are picked clean.

The mistake to avoid is treating this as a sit-down outing. Seating is scarce and the room runs on takeout, so plan to eat standing or on the move. And if it is summer, do not buy a cream cake for the ride home — it will not survive a warm carriage. Buy the fried buns and the chive bread, which travel well, and eat the cake where you bought it, at a counter, still cold.