Why Busan has no dedicated body
Busan reduced 25 agencies to 21. It knows how to trim. And yet for twenty-six years, three mayors repeated the same promise, and no single body was built to keep it. The functions exist. The organization does not.
Busan reduced 25 agencies to 21. It knows how to trim. And yet for twenty-six years, three mayors repeated the same promise, and no single body was built to keep it. The functions exist. The organization does not.
18 Questions for Next Busan · Day 7 of 18
Gray (Kim Hyunseung) · May 25, 2026
21
Nine days until Busan elects its next mayor.
Yesterday the question was Why Fukuoka, not Busan?
Today is the answer to why that gap held for twenty-six years.
Busan has reduced the number of its public agencies before.
In 2022, the Park Hyeong-jun administration took office. It consolidated 25 city-affiliated agencies down to 21.
The Urban Regeneration Support Center was absorbed into the Busan Urban Corporation. The Busan International Exchange Foundation and the Busan English Broadcasting Foundation were merged into the Busan Global City Foundation. The Busan Women and Family Development Institute and the Busan Human Resources & Lifelong Education Institute were combined. The consolidation was completed in July 2023.
Busan knows how to trim administrative fat.
And yet what Busan has never built well is something else.
A division inside City Hall
Inside Busan City Hall, there is a Maritime Capital Policy Division.
One of five divisions under the Marine, Agriculture & Fisheries Bureau. 2025 budget: 17.1 billion won. Its work: drafting the Maritime Capital master plan, the marine industry framework, the World Ocean Forum, pursuing maritime autonomy.
Next to it sits the Shipping & Ports Division. Budget: 28.7 billion won. Port infrastructure, the Busan Port hinterland, smart ports, the Arctic shipping route special zone, the maritime court.
The functions exist.
Twenty-six years ago, Mayor Ahn Sang-young declared Busan a Maritime Capital. In the years since, divisions were created inside City Hall to translate that declaration into administrative work. The words Maritime Capital are stamped onto the city's org chart. A budget is allocated every year.
And yet the way these functions operate is strange.
Real authority over Busan Port does not rest with Busan City. Busan Port is a national trade port. It is run by the Busan Port Authority (BPA) and the Busan Regional Office of Oceans and Fisheries. What Busan City directly manages is only the South Port — a 1.7-square-kilometer local coastal harbor.
The Maritime Capital Policy Division is one division among five inside the bureau. Above the division is a bureau. Above the bureau is a mayor. The mayor changes every four years.
The next mayor could move the Maritime Capital Policy Division under a different bureau, rename it, or eliminate it altogether — and none of it would be strange.
Busan has placed its greatest promise on a single division inside City Hall.
Scattered promises
Other promises are scattered the same way.
- Foreign settlement → Busan Global City Foundation
- Foreign talent attraction → Busan Economic Promotion Agency
- Startups → Busan Center for Creative Economy & Innovation
All are foundations or matched-fund organizations created by Busan City. None has its own revenue. All live on city subsidies and project commissions.
Each of the three holds some portion of internationalization, talent, or startups. But none is a control tower responsible for Busan's global city strategy as a whole.
One organization takes in foreign students. Another processes startup visas. A third handles settlement.
The same foreigner passes through three different organizations.
Functions still work when distributed. When organizations are distributed, accountability disappears.
The reason Busan has not kept its promise is not that the functions are missing. It is that no single body is accountable.
How Fukuoka did it
Fukuoka has Startup City Fukuoka. It is not a single division.
Policy, strategy, and execution move from their own seats toward the same promise.
Policy
Made inside City Hall. The Startup, National Strategic Special Zone office, under the General Affairs & Planning Bureau. Reports to the mayor directly.
Strategy
Made by the Fukuoka Asian Urban Research Center (URC). A public-interest foundation established in 1989. A separate legal entity from the city, but directly tied to the City Hall policy office. It publishes the Fukuoka Growth reports every two years, laying out the next direction of city policy in advance.
Execution
Handled by public-private spaces scattered across the city.
- Fukuoka Growth Next — an incubator built into a former school
- Startup Cafe — open to anyone who walks in
- Global Business Support — a foreign-business desk
- CIC Fukuoka — the global innovation campus that opened in spring 2025
Policy, strategy, and execution sit apart. But all three are bound under one promise. The name is Startup City Fukuoka. The promise is foreigners come and stay.
This structure has held for thirteen years.
Mayors changed. The structure remained.
Busan walked a different path
Authority over Busan Port sits with BPA under the national trade port system. Busan City participates; it does not decide.
The Global Hub City Special Act was introduced in May 2024. It did not pass.
1.6 million citizens signed petitions. The mayor chaired the Busan Future Innovation Council. Every department joined in the campaign.
And yet no single body was built to carry the promise across a change of mayor.
Twenty-six years, three mayors
2000. Mayor Ahn Sang-young declared Busan a Maritime Capital.
2018. Mayor Oh Geo-don set the administrative motto as A Northeast Asian Maritime Capital Where Citizens Are Happy.
2022. Mayor Park Hyeong-jun declared Busan a Global Hub City With the World.
The same promise crossed three mayors.
The city brand slogan changed twice. From Dynamic Busan to Busan is Good. The administrative motto changed with each mayor.
None of those slogans, none of those mottos, took the form of an organization.
The Maritime Capital Policy Division was built. The Global City Foundation was built. The Economic Promotion Agency exists. The Center for Creative Economy & Innovation exists.
For twenty-six years, functions worked while distributed.
For twenty-six years, no organization was built.
What a dedicated body is
A dedicated body is not an organization that holds a function. It is an organization that keeps a promise.
A function can be moved to a different department when a mayor changes. A promise cannot be moved.
An organization that keeps a promise exists alongside that promise. If the promise is broken, the organization loses its reason to exist.
Busan has no such body. Busan has 21 agencies, each assigned a function.
This is the difference twenty-six years has made.
The next Busan
What Busan needs to become like Fukuoka is not one more agency. Going from 21 to 30 only repeats the same pattern.
What is needed is a single decision.
A decision about what this city will become. And the act of nailing that decision into a form the next mayor cannot discard.
That form is a dedicated body.
A dedicated body is not a policy. It is the physical form of a promise.
The next Busan must begin not from a slogan but from that form.
One small request
Tomorrow is the eighth question.
Read this. Share with one person who thinks of Busan as form.
— Gray
Busan, May 2026
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