Who Are Busan's Builders?

18 Questions for Next Busan · Day 10 of 18 Gray (Kim Hyunseung) · 29 May 2026

Cities with many builders

There are many cities with many builders. Seoul. Tokyo. San Francisco. Bali — each, in its own way, a magnet for those who build. Busan is not on this list.

But a city with many builders is not the same as a builder's city. Some cities have many builders who do not particularly love the place where they build. Some cities have fewer builders who love their city deeply. A city's future is decided not by how many builders it has, but by what kind of builders it has.

The hypothesis of this essay is simple. There are builders who love Busan. Perhaps more than we can count. If this hypothesis is true — the real question is this.

Is Busan a city that recognizes the builders who love it?

The most visible shape of non-recognition

In 2015, Busan opened a Startup Café — the first official space where builders could gather. That café is now gone, or repurposed. Since then, Busan has started over with new builder spaces, in new locations, several times. Each new space opened, changed operators, closed again, and was started over somewhere else. This pattern has repeated for ten years.

Builders trust continuity. Trust grows when you can return to the same place each quarter, see the same people, check what last year's work has become, and start the next thing together. Busan has never built this recurring place. A builder who returns to Busan finds — every time — that the space they saw last year now has a different name, or has disappeared. That experience is the first sense of the city not recognizing them.

The absence of recognition is not abstract. It is the most concrete shape a builder sees at a glance.

Who is a builder?

A builder is someone who has decided to build something in this city.

Not only tech founders. The person who opens a café in their neighborhood, the photographer who sets up a studio in Yeongdo, the musician who builds an LP bar in Bupyeong-dong, the small business owner opening their first shop in Bujeon Market, the video creator building a content studio in Songjeong — all are builders. Someone who has decided to set up something with their own hands in Busan — this is the definition of a builder.

The first truth about builders is simple. Those who build, build in the city they love. When that city recognizes them. Love comes first, and recognition is what lets that love settle. Without recognition, love grows small. Small love eventually leaves.

Three places where Busan misses the builders who love it

Busan's builder infrastructure is real. According to Busan Startup Portal, the city has certified 865 technology startups over the nine years since 2017, with cumulative investment raised in 2024 exceeding 120 billion KRW (about USD 87 million). Three institutions run the infrastructure: Busan Techno Park, Busan Startup Investment Agency, and Busan Economic Promotion Agency. The city's early-stage startup package supports up to 55 million KRW per company. There is also a HyperGrowth program for entering the US market.

The foundation is there. And yet — within that foundation, the place where builders who love Busan can stay keeps closing. In three places.

The first place — the path of capital does not continue inside Busan.

It is not that Busan lacks capital. There are roughly 20 investors registered on Busan Startup Portal, and city-level startup funds exist. Early capital does enter. Where it gets stuck is the next round. Most Series A, B, and C decisions are made by VCs headquartered in Seoul. When a Busan builder goes to Seoul to raise the next round — the company headquarters moves too. Every round, the builder who chose Busan because they loved it is forced to leave Busan because the path of capital does not continue here.

The second place — team leads do not move to Busan.

Fast growth is built not by capital itself, but by the density of the team leads that capital brings in — engineering leads, product managers, design leads, growth leads. The people who actually build and own the core domains of the company. Busan severely lacks this density.

The city itself has acknowledged the problem. In 2021, Busan launched the Outstanding Talent Recruitment Support Program (우수인재 유치 지원사업), subsidizing companies up to 50 million KRW per company for two years (up to 100 million KRW total) to help recruit experienced hires from the Seoul metropolitan area. Only four companies were selected, and the same year, the local industry's verdict was already clear: salary subsidies alone cannot resolve this structurally. Five years have passed since that verdict. The structure remains essentially unchanged.

A Busan builder who has raised Series A finds that — rather than negotiating one team lead at a time to relocate — moving the entire company to Seoul is more rational. The true direct cause of headquarters relocation is not that capital is in Seoul. It is that the team leads are in Seoul. The real reason builders who love Busan leave Busan is — Busan is not yet a city that can hold someone else's love for it.

The third place — there is no report card for the last ten years.

On Busan Startup Portal, support programs, the investor directory, and certified companies are each listed separately. But — no single dashboard shows which companies the investments of the past ten years actually moved, where those companies ended up, what decisions which capital made in which periods, and which builders started in Busan and stayed in Busan to the end. There is no record of what the city has done.

This is the deepest meaning of the absence of recognition. Without a dashboard — there is no subject of learning. The next builder cannot reference the path of those who came before. The next investor cannot analyze recovery patterns of local capital. The city cannot evaluate what its own policies produced. Without transparency, progress is slow is not a business platitude — it is a fact Busan has spent the last ten years proving for itself.

That Busan has never gathered, in one place, what the builders who love Busan have done in Busan — this is the most honest face of the city not recognizing them.

So where do the builders who love Busan go?

In the places where the path of capital breaks, where the team leads will not move, where the report card does not exist — the builder feels that the city is not looking at them. When the feeling accumulates, they leave.

In the first half of 2025 alone, 4,480 young people left Busan in net outflow (Q2, Busan MBC). How many builders who loved Busan but were not recognized by Busan are inside that number — Busan does not measure separately.

And those who left — do not forget Busan. Builders scattered to Tokyo, Singapore, New York, Fukuoka still introduce themselves as Busan people, still remember Busan as the first place of their life. Busan has never once gathered that affection.

Who are Busan's builders?

Back to the first question.

865 companies. 120 billion KRW. Three institutions. Five support programs. The numbers are clear. But a builder is not someone who is supported. A builder is someone who builds. And those who build build in the city they love — when that city recognizes them.

For Busan to become a builder's city does not mean more support. It means becoming a city that recognizes the builders who love it. Sustaining one space in one place. Continuing the path of capital inside Busan. Making it possible for team leads to move. Gathering the report card of the last ten years into one place — all are different names for recognition. Recognition is where trust begins, and trust is what makes a builder's city.

There are builders who love Busan. Whether Busan recognizes them — determines the Busan the next generation will inherit.

Everything diagnosed here belongs to the Busan of the last ten years. But it is no longer certain that this diagnosis will apply, unchanged, to the next ten. A new variable has entered. Its name is — AI.

Busanloop · 18 Questions for Next Busan · Q10