Why do the young leave, and who stays?

18 Questions for Next Busan · Day 2 of 18 Hyunseung Kim (Gray) · May 19, 2026

Fifty thousand

In fifteen days, Busan's next mayor will be decided.

Yesterday's question was this:

Why must the next Busan still be Busan? Today we step one level deeper.

Over ten years, a net fifty thousand people in their twenties left this city.

That number appeared briefly yesterday. Today the question lives inside it.

Why do they leave. And who stays.

What the numbers say

Busan's young people, spring 2026:

• Net outflow of people in their 20s, 2016–2025: 50,000 (Statistics Korea)
• Share of Busan's four-year university graduates taking jobs outside the city: estimated 60%+
• Korea's top-100 companies headquartered in Busan: zero
• Youth unemployment rate (ages 15–29): 7.2% (Statistics Korea, 2025)
• Median monthly income of Busan's twentysomethings living alone: roughly 75% of the equivalent in Seoul

The reason isn't hard to find. No jobs. More precisely, no good jobs.

No major corporate headquarters.

A concentration of high-paying industries in Seoul.

Lower density of professional networks.

But.

Young people also leave Seoul. They leave Tokyo. They leave London.

Movement toward larger cities happens everywhere.

If leaving isn't uniquely Busan's problem, the question has to shift.

Not why do they leave but who stays.

A person I met at a Jeonpo craft beer bar

Jeonpo is a neighborhood in central Busan known for its café-lined streets and small craft beer bars the kind of place that fills up slowly from early afternoon.

A laptop open at a window table. Code on the screen.

A craft beer beside it, already empty. I asked what they were building.

A startup, they said.

"Are you going to Seoul?"

"Not really."

Not really. Those two words stayed with me.

This person had Seoul as an option.

They weren't staying because they couldn't leave.

Building something in Busan, they said, felt right for where they were.

The rent, the pace, the sea, and the sense of something not quite filled in yet.

That gap was the point.

In Gwangalli a beachside neighborhood on Busan's eastern edge, where the city's most photographed bridge hangs over the water someone else had converted a former factory into a workspace.

They had come from Seoul.

"In Seoul I would have spent everything on rent," they said.

They wanted to work somewhere they could see the water.

The story of the fifty thousand who left exists in the statistics.

The story of the people who stayed has not been written down anywhere.

Two kinds of staying

"Why do the young leave?"

The answer lives in structure. Jobs, wages, networks. A problem for policy.

"Who stays?"

The answer lives in people.

Two kinds of people stay.

First, those who must

Family, business, roots.

Not because they have no reason to leave but because they have a reason that holds them.

Second, those who want to

People with a reason to make something here.

The space. The sea. The pace that isn't Seoul's.

Cities where the second group grows move differently.

What they build accumulates. That accumulation calls the next person.

Cities change not by policy, but by the sum of the people who chose to stay.

The people Busan needs to understand better are not the first group but the second.

Why they stayed. What made that choice possible.

That answer is the clue to the next ten years of this city.

One small ask

Tomorrow, the third question.

How does a city with zero top-100 companies actually work?

If something here resonates, share it with one person — someone who chose to stay in Busan, in their own way.

And if that's you I'd like to hear why. busanloop@gmail.com

— Gray Busan, May 2026

PolyBusan does not endorse any party or candidate. We just ask questions. Corrections, thoughts: busanloop@gmail.com