I'm pretty sure the reason you don't wear shoes during training is so you can perfect your technique. For example, when doing a front kick you pull your toes back. When doing a roundhouse, you push your toes forward so you can kick with the flat of your foot. Side kick you need to turn your ankle and kick with the blade of the foot. If you are wearing shoes, you or your instructor/s won't be able to tell if you are using the correct technique. Shoes also make it harder to perform a kick for beginners as it adds extra weight to your leg which you don't need when learning. I was part of a club that allowed shoes for higher belt levels (Red Belt and above).
To me TKD is primarily a martial art, secondly a sport, thirdly self defence. So I'm not really training with getting attacked in mind, if someone were to attack me I'd be better equipped to deal with it but that's more unintended consequence. To me the martial art aspect is part learning technique, which as the previous poster says, requires hitting with the right bit of your foot. The other part is more art, shoes off looks better. For sport, we're not trying to hurt each other, I certainly feel more more confident hitting safely in my bare feet than shoes because I have full control of my foot and feel exactly where it ends unlike a shoe. If breaking, I could hit with the right part of my foot more accurately bare foot than in shoes which is better for transfer of force into the board. If it were just about self defence then in shoes too but you do hit a slippery slope argument. Should you wear more restrictive clothing? More impractical shoes than sports types? Not warm up?
I don't think you would. The humidity is adding 8 degrees to the temperature, and there's not a breath of wind most of the day. The name might be spelled Townsville, but it should properly be pronounced hell. And we didn't even get the cyclone .
