Who Busan Recognizes as Its Own

18 Questions for Next Busan · Day 12 of 18
Gray (Kim Hyunseung) · 30 May 2026

Two Busans
There is a Busan seen from outside.
Fifth in the world for container ports. Eighth globally as a smart city, second in Asia — and within that index, first in the world for Innovation Support. The external assessment is clear. A city that stood at 62nd in 2021 climbed to 8th in four years. Busan is a city the world recognizes.
And there is a Busan as it is lived from inside.
Seo Ok-sun, a researcher at the Busan Development Institute, diagnosed the city's youth employment problem as a chronic condition Busan has suffered for more than twenty years. Busan's youth population fell from 792,000 in 2015 to 650,000 in 2023 — over 100,000 gone in eight years. The biggest reason the young leave is jobs. According to a Busan Chamber of Commerce survey, the minimum salary young people in Busan hope for is 30 million won; the starting salary local firms offer is 26 million won. In the same period, Busan's unfilled-position rate was 12%, higher than the national average of 11.2%. Firms cannot find people, and people cannot find jobs. The mismatch has stood in the same place for twenty years.
One city, two faces. The Busan seen from outside is 8th in the world; the Busan lived from inside is a chronic condition of twenty years.
The claim of this essay is simple. The world recognizes Busan. But Busan does not recognize its own people. That gap makes — those who left, those who could not come, and those who could not arrive.
The first gap — those who left
Where do the young who leave Busan go? Where the good jobs are.
In 2023, workers at companies with 300 or more employees earned a monthly average of 4.77 million won — over 2 million more than those at firms with fewer than 50 (2.71 million). Narrowed to large firms versus small, it is 5.93 million against 2.98 million — nearly double. And after twenty years of tenure, the gap widens to 3.67 million won a month. What began as an 810,000-won gap for new hires only deepens with time.
The meaning of these numbers is simple. Staying in Busan becomes a choice that approaches economic loss. Almost no young person leaves because they dislike Busan. There are young people who love it but cannot stay. The two are entirely different things.
This is the first face of the gap. The world recognizes Busan as an 8th-ranked smart city, while inside that city the labor of the young is priced at half what a large firm pays. The Busan seen from outside shines; the young inside cannot find their place within that shine.
The second gap — those who could not come
In the Seoul metropolitan area, there are people who want to come to Busan. Work-life balance, a coastal city, lower costs, more space. Foreigners who have stayed in Busan say it is less hectic and more approachable than Seoul — and there is a reason they say so.
Busan already pays a settlement grant of 3 million won and a retention incentive of 1.5 million won to young workers at small and mid-sized firms who move from elsewhere or return to the city. But — this grant cannot close the 3.67 million won monthly gap between large and small firms. Over a year, that gap exceeds 44 million won. The policy works, but the real hole it tries to fill is far larger.
So between those who want to come and those who came, a seat sits empty. The people who should be in that seat — the Busan native returning from the capital, the outside builder wanting to start in Busan, the employee volunteering for a Busan branch of a Seoul headquarters — are not there. The outside gaze that recognizes Busan as 8th in the world does not actually arrive inside Busan. It is the gap between assessment and arrival.
The third gap — those who could not arrive
There are people who recognize Busan from the farthest away. The foreigners who live in Busan.
In 2023, Busan's foreign residents numbered 83,401. Against a population of 3.21 million, that is 2.5%. In the same period the national average was 5.18% (2024) and 5.44% (2025) — Busan is half the national average. Over fifteen years Busan's foreign population grew 2.5 times, but not at the pace to keep up with the national average. The foreign-resident ratio of a global port city sits at half the national average.
The distribution makes it clearer. Nam-gu and Sasang-gu hold international students; Saha-gu and Gangseo-gu, foreign workers. The foreigners who live in Busan are closer to foreigners brought by universities and factories than foreigners for whom Busan designed a place to settle. They arrived, but the city has not gone so far as to recognize them as Busan people.
Here the gap runs deepest. The external assessment recognizes Busan as an 8th-ranked smart city, yet that recognition has not entered the daily vocabulary of the foreigners who arrived in Busan. A city where those who arrive are not recognized as Busan people will struggle to call those who might arrive.
The gap in recognition
The three gaps are all different faces of one thing.
Those who left, those who could not come, the foreigners who could not arrive — what these three share is not good jobs. Good jobs are a result. What lies before them is — the gap in recognition.
The world recognizes Busan as an 8th-ranked smart city · first in Innovation Support · 5th among container ports. Busan does not recognize its own people as much as the world recognizes the city. It prices its young people's labor at half a large firm's wage, tries to fill the 3.67-million-won gap for those who would come with a 3-million-won grant, and recognizes the foreigners who arrived at only half the national average.
It is true that the young leave because there are no good jobs. But that is not all of it. If Busan is a city that does not recognize its own people — then even when good jobs appear, only half the reason to stay is filled. Recognition does not replace jobs. It points, rather, to the place that jobs alone cannot fill.
The twenty-year chronic condition Seo Ok-sun diagnosed is not merely a jobs problem. It is twenty years in which Busan did not recognize its own citizens as much as the world recognized the city.
Who Busan recognizes as its own
Back to the first question.
A Busan person is someone Busan has recognized. Birth alone does not make a Busan person. The one born and raised who stayed, the one who left and returned, the one who came from far away and settled — each becomes a Busan person when Busan recognizes them. The place that recognition must reach holds — those who stayed, those who left, those who could not come, and those who arrived.
The external assessment has already arrived in Busan. The recognition that Busan is an 8th-ranked smart city sits outside. The next place is — where Busan returns that recognition to its own citizens. Recognizing the young's labor as a good seat rather than half a large firm's wage. Seeing precisely, and trying to close, the 3.67-million-won gap for those who would come. Recognizing the foreigners who arrived as citizens of a global port city. The three are not different things, but the same one thing.
The world's recognition has already arrived. The place where Busan's own recognition must begin is — where we stand now.
But who is we? The mayor? City hall? Businesses? Citizens? Who does the recognizing — that is the next question.

Busanloop · 18 Questions for Next Busan · Q12