Busan hosts APEC and Asia’s games as Korea’s second city
Busan, South Korea’s second city after Seoul, holds over 3.3 million people across fifteen districts and one county as of 2024. It staged an APEC summit in 2005 and the 2002 Asian Games, advertising itself as a port of conventions and sport.
The name, recorded since the late 15th century, means 'Cauldron Mountain' in Sino-Korean, probably an old name for Mount Hwangnyeong west of the centre, and the spelling Busan replaced Pusan in 2000. Neolithic coastal dwellers left stone tools, pottery and shells, and around the first century a chiefdom called Koch'ilsan-guk occupied today's Dongnae District until Silla absorbed it; the area was renamed Dongnae-gun in 757, and Beomeosa temple was founded in 835.
In 1423 the port and a Japanese trading enclave, a waegwan, were set up. During the Japanese invasions of 1592 to 1598, fortresses including Busanjinseong and Dongnaeeupseong resisted alongside volunteer militias, and in 1763 sweet potatoes from Tsushima were planted in Busan before anywhere else in the country. The 1876 Treaty of Ganghwa made it Korea's first international port, and under Japanese rule it was the only Korean city to run steam trams before electrification in 1924.
In the Korean War, Busan and Daegu were the only South Korean cities the North failed to take in the first three months, and some 500,000 refugees crowded Busan in early 1951 while UN troops held the Pusan Perimeter and the city acted as a stand-in capital. In 1963 it split from South Gyeongsang Province as South Korea's first Directly Governed City.
Tsushima lies about 49.5 kilometres offshore, and Fukuoka, a sister city, about 180 kilometres. Busan's port ranks sixth in the world, handling 21.81 million TEU of containers in 2020 across 43 berths, and in 2022 the city's GRDP reached 104 trillion won, three-quarters of the economy coming from services. Busan also gets less snow than any other region of Korea.
Source: Busan
