Busan is Korea's relaxed, seafaring answer to the intensity of Seoul. Here, the country's second city unfolds kilometres of urban beaches, mountains that look out over the sea, one of Asia's largest fish markets and Buddhist temples perched on cliffs where the waves break. It's a city of dizzying contrasts: luxury skyscrapers facing the sand at Haeundae and, a few kilometres away, the maze of colourful little houses in Gamcheon, a post-war neighbourhood turned into a work of art climbing up the hillside.
What makes people fall for Busan is that mix of sea, mountains and street life. You can have fish soup for breakfast amid the bustle of Jagalchi market, spend the morning at a temple by the ocean, the afternoon on a cable car gliding over the water and the evening eating fresh seafood in front of the illuminated Gwangalli bridge. It's also the city of Korea's great film festival, with a cultural and food scene that keeps on growing.
This guide explores Busan with a practical, warm eye: how to organise its coastal neighbourhoods, which beaches, temples and viewpoints not to miss, how to get around by metro and the odd taxi, where to eat the best fish and seafood, and how to slip away to Gyeongju, the old capital of Silla. Busan is Korea by the sea, and a couple of days is enough to understand why so many Koreans dream of moving to this oceanfront city.
Busan has been tied to the sea and to trade for millennia. For centuries it was Korea's main point of contact with Japan: here, during the Joseon dynasty, the 'waegwan' operated, a regulated Japanese trading enclave, and much of the exchange (and also the conflict) between the two countries passed through its port, including the invasions of the late 16th century. But the episode that shaped its modern history was the Korean War (1950-1953): when almost the entire peninsula fell to the North, Busan remained the South's last great stronghold and served as the provisional capital of the Republic of Korea, a refuge for millions of displaced people fleeing the war. Many of those refugees built entire neighbourhoods on the hillsides, such as today's Gamcheon. Since then, Busan has grown into a major industrial port and is now a modern coastal metropolis. The full story, from the waegwan to the city of cinema, is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The cradle of the Silla kingdom and of Confucianism, and at the same time the industrial engine of modern Korea: from ancient Gyeongju to the great port city of Busan.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Busan was born of its geography. At the southeastern tip of the Korean peninsula, where the mountains drop into the sea and form sheltered bays, lies one of the country's finest natural harbours, facing Japan, which sits just across the strait. That position shaped its destiny from the earliest times: the area has been inhabited since prehistory, as the shell middens and archaeological sites found nearby show, and it belonged to the successive confederations and kingdoms of the southeast, within the orbit of the powerful kingdom of Silla.
For centuries, the town was a fishing and military post of some importance, with fortresses keeping watch over the coast. But what set it apart from other Korean cities, from very early on, was its role as a gateway to Japan. No other part of Korea was so close to the neighbouring archipelago or so naturally connected to it, and that made Busan a meeting point, and at times a flashpoint, between the two cultures.
That calling as a maritime frontier, both a bridge to Japan and a wall against it, runs through the whole history of the city and explains many of its most important episodes, from the regulated trade of the Joseon era to the wars that ravaged the peninsula.
During the Joseon dynasty (1392-1897), Busan was the main point of official contact between Korea and Japan. This was home to the 'waegwan', a carefully regulated and enclosed Japanese trading and diplomatic enclave where merchants from the archipelago could do business under strict conditions. It was a way of keeping up exchange with the neighbour without fully opening the country: a controlled valve on the southeast coast. Goods, embassies and, with them, cultural influences came and went through Busan.
But that closeness also made Busan the first victim whenever relations broke down. In 1592, the Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched a major invasion of Korea (the Imjin War) aiming to conquer the country and, through it, China. Busan was the first place to fall: its fortresses, such as Dongnae, put up a heroic resistance before being overrun, in episodes that Korean memory recalls as examples of sacrifice. The long and devastating war ended with the Japanese withdrawal, thanks in part to the naval victories of Admiral Yi Sun-sin and his famous 'turtle ships'.
Once the conflict was over, trade with Japan eventually resumed and the waegwan reopened. For the rest of the Joseon era, Busan remained Korea's window to the east, a role that set it apart from every other city in the country.
In the 19th century, Busan's old role as a gateway to Japan took on a new and decisive importance. In 1876, the treaty Japan imposed on the 'hermit kingdom' of Korea forced it to open several ports to foreign trade, and Busan was the first of them. The city changed rapidly: Japanese merchants and settlers moved in, modern docks, banks and new-style buildings went up, and a mixed population grew up around the port.
With Japan's annexation of Korea in 1910, Busan became a key piece of the colonial system. As the great link port between the peninsula and the archipelago, it filled up with infrastructure serving the empire: Korean goods and resources left from here for Japan, and settlers and officials arrived here. The city modernised, but at the cost of colonial exploitation and the repression of Korean identity that the whole country suffered during the 35 years of occupation.
When liberation came in 1945, with Japan's defeat, Busan was already one of Korea's leading port cities, strongly marked by those decades of contact and domination. But the episode that would shape it most deeply was still to come, and it would be a tragedy that, for a few years, made Busan the capital of an entire country.
The most dramatic moment in Busan's modern history came with the Korean War. When North Korea invaded the south in June 1950, its troops advanced so quickly that within a few weeks they had taken almost the entire peninsula. The South Korean government and UN forces were cornered in a small pocket in the southeast: the so-called 'Pusan Perimeter', a defensive line around the city that was, quite literally, the last stronghold that did not fall to the north.
Busan became the provisional capital of the Republic of Korea for most of the war. Hundreds of thousands, millions even, of refugees from all over the country poured into the city fleeing the front, crowding in wherever they could. Many built makeshift homes on the slopes of the mountains around the port, giving rise to whole neighbourhoods of stacked little houses and steep alleys. One of those refugee settlements is the one that, decades later, would be transformed into the colourful and famous Gamcheon culture village.
The war left an indelible mark on the city, on its urban fabric as well as its food and its character. Dishes that are now Busan icons, such as dwaeji gukbap (pork and rice soup), were born or became popular in those years of scarcity, making the most of humble ingredients. Busan is, to a large extent, a city forged by refugees and by the memory of the time when it was the heart of a nation on the brink of disappearing.
After the 1953 armistice, Busan, like the rest of the country, took part in the extraordinary recovery known as the 'Miracle on the Han River'. Its natural harbour, one of the best in the country, became the cornerstone of export-driven Korea: the products of Korean factories left for the world through Busan, and the city grew into a major industrial, logistics and fishing hub. Over time, the Port of Busan became one of the largest and busiest container ports on the planet, the economic engine of the whole southeastern region.
The city spread across its valleys and hillsides, filled up with factories, shipyards and docks, and its population soared until it became Korea's second city. In 1963 it gained the status of a metropolitan city with its own administration, and over the following decades it kept modernising its waterfront, turning old port and industrial areas into neighbourhoods of skyscrapers, city beaches and promenades, such as today's Haeundae and Marine City.
Busan also managed to reach out to the world through culture and major events. The Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) was born in 1996 and has become the most important in Asia and a hallmark of the city, every October. And in 2005, Busan hosted the APEC summit, another sign of its role on the international stage.
Today's Busan is a modern coastal metropolis that has made its bond with the sea and its cultural energy its greatest assets. Like few other cities, it combines city beaches packed in summer, luxury skyscrapers facing the sand, century-old fish markets, temples beside the cliffs and post-war neighbourhoods turned into works of art. It is a different Korea from Seoul's: more seafaring, more relaxed, with its own accent (the Gyeongsang dialect, direct and expressive) and enormous civic pride.
Thanks to the film festival, its food scene and spots as photogenic as Gamcheon, Haedong Yonggungsa temple or the illuminated Gwangalli bridge, Busan has become one of the most sought-after destinations in the country, for foreign tourists and Koreans alike, many of whom dream of retiring to live by its sea. The city keeps reinventing its coastline, with viewpoints, cable cars and promenades that make the most of its spectacular geography.
Exploring Busan means looking at once at the old Korea that faced Japan, at the tragedy of the war and the refugees who shaped it, and at one of the most dynamic and enjoyable cities in the country. Between the fish of Jagalchi market, the colourful capsules gliding above the coast and the little houses of Gamcheon, Busan tells its own story: that of a city forged by the sea that has turned its geography, and even its scars, into its greatest charm.
