Yi Sun-sin Stadium

The ground opened under a different name. For four and a half months from April 2008 it was Asan Stadium, and on 25 August that year it was renamed after Yi Sun-sin, the admiral. The name has stuck through three separate football tenancies since.

Those tenancies are the ground's real history. Asan United played here from 2008 to 2013. Asan Mugunghwa followed for three seasons from 2017. Since 2020 the tenant has been Chungnam Asan FC, of K League 2.

What a visitor notices first is the distance. The pitch is ringed by a 400-metre, eight-lane urethane track, so the near touchline is never as near as it looks from the seats. That layout is not accidental: in 2016 the venue was the main site for the 97th National Sports Festival and the 36th National Disability Sports Festival. The same year, a complex sports centre designed by Haeahn Architecture was completed within the facility.

Construction began in February 2006 and ran to roughly 46.35 billion won. The audio system has been updated in recent years — a small thing, but on a bowl this open, with the crowd set back behind the track, it does much of the work of holding the place together on a quiet weeknight.