Busan

The bays that became Busan were settled from prehistory — shell mounds survive at Dongsam-dong on Yeongdo — and by the Joseon period a walled town at Dongnae ruled the area while a Japanese trading post, the Waegwan, operated under close supervision on the shore. Japanese forces landed here in 1592 at the start of the Imjin War, storming Busanjin and Dongnae fortresses, and the port remained the peninsula's regulated point of contact with Japan for centuries afterwards.

The modern city dates from 1876, when the Japan–Korea Treaty opened Busan as Korea's first treaty port. Under Japanese rule from 1910 it was rebuilt as a colonial port and the terminus of the railway from Seoul, with a ferry to Shimonoseki carrying goods, migrants and conscripted labour. Hills above the harbour filled with Korean workers' housing as the Japanese town spread over the flat ground and reclaimed land.

Busan's defining decade was the 1950s. When the Korean War began in June 1950 the city lay inside the Pusan Perimeter, the last territory held in the south, and served as the provisional capital for most of the war. Its population more than doubled as refugees arrived, building shanty settlements on every slope — Gamcheon and the villages above Choryang began this way. Post-war reconstruction turned the port into the country's shipping and shipbuilding hub, and container trade made it one of the world's largest container ports. The film festival arrived in 1996, the Asian Games in 2002, and a long programme of waterfront redevelopment has since remade Haeundae and the reclaimed land around it.

Busan thinks of itself as the opposite of Seoul: maritime, informal and direct. The Gyeongsang dialect spoken here is recognised instantly across the country for its flat vowels and strong pitch, and it carries an unfussy reputation that locals enjoy. Older residents trace family histories to the refugee years, and the city keeps a memory of the war that is more immediate than elsewhere, marked by the United Nations cemetery and by memorial ceremonies each November.

Film is the city's cultural calling card. The Busan International Film Festival has run since 1996 and fills cinemas across Centum City and Nampo-dong each autumn, supported by an archive, a film commission and a permanent Cinema Center. Sport matters at least as much: the Lotte Giants baseball team has a reputation for the loudest crowds in Korean baseball, complete with orange plastic bags worn as rally caps, and a K League football club plays in the west of the city.

Buddhism has deep roots here, with Beomeosa on Geumjeongsan among the country's important monasteries and Haedong Yonggungsa drawing crowds at dawn on New Year's Day. Shamanic practice survives quietly in the hills, and fishing communities still hold rites for a safe catch. Contemporary art has spread through the hillside villages of Gamcheon and Huinnyeoul, while Busan's proximity to Japan shows in its food, its ferry traffic and long-standing exchanges between the two ports.

About 3.3 million people live in Busan, making it South Korea's second city, though its population has fallen for three decades as younger residents move to the capital region, and its residents are on average older than the national picture. Households are spread along narrow coastal plains and up steep slopes, so daily life involves buses, stairs and long metro journeys; the newest housing stands on reclaimed land at Centum City, Marine City and the Myeongji district in the west.

The port underpins the economy. Busan handles the great majority of the country's container traffic, most of it now through the New Port at Gangseo, and shipping, logistics, shipbuilding services and cold storage employ many thousands. Fishing and seafood processing remain visible in the old harbour, tourism and conventions grew with the beaches and the festival, and finance and film industries were deliberately encouraged as part of a policy of decentralising away from Seoul.

The rhythm of the day starts early at the fish quays and ends late in Seomyeon's bars. Summer evenings belong to the beaches, where families set out mats and the promenades stay busy past midnight. Persistent local issues include an ageing and shrinking population, the cost of maintaining hillside districts, redevelopment pressure on old neighbourhoods, and the balance between the port's expansion and the city's tourist waterfront.

Busan's food is built on the sea and on the war years. Dwaeji gukbap, a milky pork-bone broth poured over rice and seasoned at the table with salted shrimp, chives and pepper paste, is the city's own dish and is sold in dedicated shops across Seomyeon and the old centre. Milmyeon, cold wheat noodles in a chilled broth, was created by refugees from the north who adapted their buckwheat naengmyeon to wheat flour that arrived as aid. Eomuk, fish cake, is a Busan speciality sold on skewers from broth pots and in smart bakery-style shops.

Raw fish, hoe, is eaten everywhere — at Jagalchi, in the raw-fish halls at Millak and Cheongsapo, and from tanks on any harbour front — usually with sesame oil, pepper paste and lettuce leaves rather than soy sauce alone. Grilled eel, steamed blue crab, shellfish barbecues and ghost-fish soup fill out the seafood repertoire, and blowfish soup is a hangover remedy. Sea urchin and gejang, raw crab marinated in soy sauce, appear in season.

Street food is its own tradition. Ssiat hotteok, the seed-stuffed sweet pancake fried at BIFF Square, is particular to the city, as is bibim dangmyeon, spicy cold glass noodles from the Gukje Market alleys. Dwaeji galbi and grilled offal serve the late-night drinking crowd, and the coastal cafés of Gwangalli and Dongbaek have made Busan one of the country's strongest coffee cities.