English Wikipedia dates the Taegu airfield to 31 January 1937, when Korea was under Japanese rule. When war came in June 1950 the Americans numbered it K-2, and what they found was modest: a dirt and gravel runway and two concrete buildings. Taegu lay inside the Pusan Perimeter, the pocket of south-eastern Korea that held through the summer of 1950, and that made it one of the few airfields close enough to the front for piston fighters.

The first to use it in earnest were the Bout One Mustangs. HistoryNet’s account of Major Dean Hess says ten World War II–vintage F-51Ds arrived at Taegu on 4 July 1950, the first of seven bases the detachment improvised in six months. Of the ten American volunteer instructors, seven were killed in the first year. The USAF’s 18th Fighter-Bomber Group followed with F-51s from mid-July, and a provisional 51st Fighter Squadron flew here from 10 July to 4 August, per Wikipedia.

After the Inchon landing pushed the front north, K-2 turned into a jet base. From 1 October 1950 the 49th Fighter-Bomber Group flew F-80 Shooting Stars from Taegu, which Wikipedia calls the first jet unit to be based in Korea. In May 1951 the 930th Engineer Aviation Group began repairing the pierced-steel-plank runway and laying a 9,000-foot (2,700 m) concrete one, the ancestor of today’s runways.

The 11th Fighter Wing was formed at Daegu on 1 August 1958, according to Korean Wikipedia, and it has stayed there ever since. For half a century it flew American types handed on from the USAF or bought new: the F-5A/B, retired from the 102nd Squadron on 12 August 2005, and the F-4D Phantom, whose retirement ceremony the wing held on 16 June 2010 after 41 years in Korean service.

The wing’s records, as Korean Wikipedia summarises them, are the ordinary pride of a fighter unit: an 18-year accident-free record for the 102nd Squadron in April 2009, and in December 2009 Major Lee Jin-wook of the 122nd named the air force’s Top Gun. They also record the tension of the period. On 3 June 2009 F-15Ks were scrambled towards Baengnyeong Island, near the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea, taking six minutes to get airborne and 29 minutes to reach the area.

South Korea chose the F-15K in April 2002 in its first F-X competition, against the Rafale, the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Su-35. The first aircraft flew in March 2005 and the first pair reached Korea in October 2005. Forty were bought in the first batch; the last three of them landed at Daegu on 8 October 2008, and a second batch of 21, worth 2.3 trillion won, was ordered on 25 April 2008. Wikipedia says the air force expects to fly the type until 2060.

The F-15K’s weapons set it apart. When the United States was slow to approve the JASSM cruise missile, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration decided at the end of 2013 to buy the German-Swedish Taurus KEPD 350 cruise missile instead, according to Korean Wikipedia.

On 2 February 2026 Boeing was awarded 2.806 billion dollars to design and develop the upgrade that will take the 59 remaining aircraft to F-15EX Eagle II standard: ADCP II mission computers, the APG-82(V)1 AESA radar, the EPAWSS electronic warfare suite and a missile warning system. The Aviationist reports that the work runs to 31 December 2037.

Daegu is a city base in the full sense. The runways sit a few kilometres from the city centre, and the AIP imposes a quiet hour from 1500 to 2000 UTC every night, during which engine runs and non-essential aircraft operations are banned unless the air force authorises them. Civil airliners share the same concrete, which is why the airport forbids photography of the military side.

In 2020, according to Korean Wikipedia, Daegu and North Gyeongsang agreed to move both the military and the civil functions of the airport to a new integrated airport in Gunwi and Uiseong counties, and to fold Gunwi into Daegu city. The opening date and the future of the present site were not confirmed in the sources reached, and the plan should be read as a decision in progress rather than a timetable.