Taejon Expo '93 was a three-month international exposition held between Saturday, August 7, 1993 and Sunday, November 7, 1993 in the central

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

n city of

Daejeon Daejeon () is South Korea's fifth-largest metropolis, with a population of 1.5 million as of 2019. Located in the central-west region of South Korea alongside forested hills and the Geum River, the city is known both for its technology an ...

(at the time spelled "Taejŏn").

Theme

The theme of the exposition was "The Challenge of a New Road of Development", with various other sub-themes around sustainable and 'green' development. The exposition was an officially endorsed

Bureau International des Expositions The Bureau international des expositions (BIE; English: International Bureau of Expositions) is an intergovernmental organization created to supervise international exhibitions (also known as expos or world expos) falling under the jurisdiction ...

(BIE) specialized exposition commemorating the centenary of the first-ever representation of the " Hermit Kingdom" (Korea) to a world exposition, namely the 1893

Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

. It claimed to be the first exposition held in a developing country, although both the BIE-sanctioned

Exposition internationale du bicentenaire de Port-au-Prince The Exposition internationale du bicentenaire de Port-au-Prince was a world's fair held in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1949 to mark the 200th anniversary of the city's founding. Creation President Dumarsais Estimé argued in 1948 for an exposition t ...

in 1949 and Shanghai's

Expo 2010 Expo 2010, officially the Expo 2010 Shanghai China, was held on both banks of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, China, from 1 May to 31 October 2010. It was a major World Expo registered by the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), in the t ...

could also claim this title.

Site zoning

The exposition site consisted of three main areas - the international zone, the corporate zone and the fun park zone. Being a specialized exposition, the pavilions in the international zone were for the most part pre-fabricated and rented out to the various international participants for the duration of the exposition. 108 nations and 33 international organizations participated at Taejon Expo '93 - making it one of the largest expositions ever held. Among the most memorable were the flagship Korean and

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...

Pavilions. The corporate zone represented the best wizardry that Korean companies could afford, with some spectacular

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...

and contents, all along the theme of the exposition, with the majority of these pavilions being permanent in nature. Pavilions included "Starquest" by

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

, and the three-dimensional

IMAX IMAX is a proprietary system of high-resolution cameras, film formats, film projectors, and theaters known for having very large screens with a tall aspect ratio (approximately either 1.43:1 or 1.90:1) and steep stadium seating. Graeme ...

presentation courtesy of

Daewoo Daewoo ( ; Hangul: , Hanja: , ; literally "great universe" and a portmanteau of "dae" meaning great, and the given name of founder and chairman Kim Woo-choong) also known as the Daewoo Group, was a major South Korean chaebol (type of conglomerat ...

. For the Korean Air Lines sponsored pavilion, award-winning experience designer Bob Rogers (designer) and the design team BRC Imagination Arts and Iwerks Entertainment ( SimEx-Iwerks) produced a 360 degree 9-screen travelogue of a Korean girl who receives magical Circlevision postcards from her pen pals around the world. There was also the Kumdori Land fun-park zone, named after the Expo's alienesque mascot "Kumdori" ( Twinkle, the Dream Being), which featured some of the latest in roller-coasters and other more traditional fun-park fare.

Theme tower

The center of the exposition was pinnacled by the 93-metre high "''Hanbit-tap''" - or Tower of Great Light, modeled on a traditional Korean Observatory, where guests could take a lift to the central viewing platform for a bird's eye view of the whole exposition site. Today, this platform features a few physics experiments. Also nearby are the flagship Korean National Pavilion and the United Nations Pavilion, which was built in the shape of a graceful dove.

Present-day activities

Today one can visit the former expo site, now called

Expo Science Park Expo Science Park is a science park in Yuseong-gu to the north of Daejeon, South Korea, built for Taejŏn Expo '93. Facilities at Expo Park included a garden, amusement park, and observation tower. While the tower and some buildings remain, most of ...

savour the site from the Tower of Great Light, visit the United Nations Pavilion which now hosts the Daejeon Expo Commemorative Center, World Expo Souvenirs Museum, and Daejeon Unification Pavilion; or use one of the few remaining buildings which host occasional unrelated exhibitions. Further information on Expo Park could be found at the official website. While no longer hosted, content was largely written in Korean, with some English language sub-headings to allow for navigation. The site included the 'Cyberspace' VR Panorama page where one could view 360 degree photo shoots of various aspects of the site. Part of the site is now being used for movie and television productions while another large piece has become the new headquarters for the Institute for Basic Science which relocated in 2018.

Legacy

Taejon Expo Science Park opened in June 1994. Only three main buildings remain from the expo in the park. These being the Tower of Great Light, the Government Pavilion, and the Peace and Friendship Pavilion. Apart from Expo Park, there is a Korean language legacy website for the Expo, a project of the Expo 93 Foundation, at http://www.expo93.co.kr/. One of the features of the website is an e-books section, where several dozen print resources from the Expo - all official Organising Committee publications - have been reproduced online. Whilst the majority of these are also in the Korean language, one publication in English is the comprehensiv
Expo 93 Travel Manual
which is located at this page. Taejon Expo' 93, like many other former expo cities and regions, is a member of the BIE-endorsed A.V.E. - Association of Expo Cities and Regions, founded in

Seville Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Penins ...

in 2002.

References

External links

A Brief Review of Expo '93Official website of the BIE

Korea Expo Park Official web-site

Expo '93 page at ExpoMuseum.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Taejon Expo '93 1993 in South Korea Daejeon Exhibitions in South Korea 1993 in the environment Fairs in South Korea