Four days in Busan: where Korea goes to the beach, and eats the fish alive

Three nights on the coast, one metro line down the peninsula, and a last morning at the only United Nations cemetery in the world.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Busan
Places
11 across 4 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Busan is a port that ran out of flat ground. The city climbs the hills behind its harbour in terraces of small houses, drops back down to the water at half a dozen beaches, and threads a metro line through the gaps. Nothing about it was planned and that is most of the charm.

It is also the city Korea fled to. When the front collapsed in 1950 the line held north of here and the city never fell, and its population swelled with refugees who built on whatever slope was left. The painted hillside and the war cemetery in this trip both come straight out of that.

Come for the seafood and the swimming, stay for the fact that everyone here is a bit more relaxed than in Seoul. Three nights is enough to see the coast properly without spending your whole holiday on the metro.

Highlights

  • Squid still moving on the plate at the fish market, if you are brave enough
  • Gamcheon, a refugee hillside repainted in every colour there is
  • A cable car that crosses open sea to a cliff park, in the middle of a city
  • A temple built on sea rocks rather than up a mountain, which is the wrong way round for Korea
  • The Gwangan bridge lighting up while you eat outside on the sand

Where to stay

Busan, three nights

Two areas make sense. Nampo, the old downtown around the fish market, puts you in the middle of the street food, the markets and the tower, and it is where the city feels most like itself. Haeundae, forty minutes east, is beach hotels and towers and is better if you want to swim before breakfast.

Nampo is the better base for these four days: three of them start there or nearby, and the metro handles the fourth. Wherever you sleep, note that the city is long rather than compact, and a cross-town trip is a solid forty-five minutes.

Day by day

Day 1 in Busan

Jagalchi, Gukje Market and the tower at Yongdusan

Everything today is within a few blocks of Jagalchi station, which is where Busan has done business for a century. The fish market is the anchor: two floors of tanks, an entire quayside of women selling what came in this morning, and stalls upstairs that will cook whatever you point at.

The markets behind it are the other half of the story. Gukje grew out of the refugee years and still sells everything a person could need, in aisles you have to turn sideways to pass through. The street-food lanes around the old cinema square run off the same grid, and the ssiat hotteok stalls there are worth the queue.

Finish at the park on the hill. Busan Tower is 118 metres and honest about being a tourist attraction; the view over the port at sunset is the reason to go up, and there is a hillside escalator so you do not have to climb.

  1. 15:00

    Jagalchi Fish Market

    Other

    Probably the most famous fish market in Korea. Pick something from a tank downstairs and take it to a stall upstairs to be grilled or sliced; the squid is served still moving if you want it that way.

  2. 16:30

    Gukje Market

    Other

    One of the biggest traditional markets in the city, selling clothes, hardware, dried fish and everything else. Walk it slowly and eat as you go, then cut through the film-square lanes to the north.

  3. 18:00

    Yongdusan Park and Busan Tower

    Leisure

    The hill above the markets, and the tower that stands on it. Go up an hour before sunset for the harbour and the bridges; the padlocks on the fence are optional.

  4. 20:00

    Dinner in the Nampo alleys

    Eat

    Dwaeji gukbap, the pork broth Busan is known for, or a plate of raw fish back down at the market. Both are better in a plastic-stool place than anywhere with a menu in English.

With more time: The market is a different place at six in the morning, when the boats land and the auctions run. If you wake early on any day of this trip, that is where to spend the hour.

Day 2 in Busan

Gamcheon, the sea cable car and Songdo

West of the centre the hills come right down to the water, and today follows them. Gamcheon is the village everyone photographs: a slope of small houses stacked in steps, painted in blocks of colour, with alleys running between them that are barely shoulder width.

It began as somewhere for refugees and members of a religious sect to live in the 1950s, and stayed poor for decades until an art project at the end of the 2000s repainted it and put installations in the lanes. It works, and it is worth remembering that several thousand people still live there. Keep out of the private stairwells.

Then down to the coast. The cable car from Songdo runs out over open water to the headland at Amnam, which is a strange and excellent thing to do in the middle of a city, and the beach below it is reckoned to be the first in Korea laid out for bathing.

  1. 09:30

    Gamcheon Culture Village

    Other

    Take the bus up and walk down. Start at the top viewpoint, follow the alley route through the art installations, and give it a full two hours because the streets double back constantly.

  2. 12:30

    Lunch on the way down

    Eat

    The cafes at the top of the village have the view and the queue. The noodle and gimbap shops at the bus stop below have neither, and cost a third as much.

  3. 14:00

    Busan Air Cruise (Songdo Marine Cable Car)

    Other

    The marine cable car from the beach to Amnam Park, out over the sea the whole way. The crystal cabins have glass floors and cost more; the ordinary ones have the same view.

  4. 15:45

    Songdo Beach

    Nature

    Small, quiet and about 450 metres end to end, with cafes along the back of it. This was the main beach in Busan before Haeundae took over, and it is still the better one for an hour of doing nothing.

With more time: With more time, the coastal walkway that runs around the cliffs from Songdo is one of the best short walks in the city, on boardwalks pinned to the rock above the water.

Day 3 in Busan

The temple on the rocks, Haeundae, and Gwangalli after dark

Korean temples are mountain temples, almost without exception, which is why the one on the east coast today is such an oddity: it sits on a rock shelf with the sea breaking underneath it. Get there early. By midday the stairs down to it are a slow-moving queue.

Haeundae is the beach the whole country knows, a wide arc of sand with towers behind it. In August it is shoulder to shoulder and in October it is yours. The good eating is not on the seafront but in the lanes a block or two back.

Save Gwangalli for the evening. It is smaller and scruffier than Haeundae and much better at night, when the suspension bridge across the bay lights up and the restaurants along the sand fill up with people eating outside.

  1. 09:00

    Yonggungsa Temple

    Religious

    Take the metro east and a bus from Haeundae, or a taxi if there are three of you. You walk in through a market of stalls, then down the steps to the rocks and the halls above the water.

  2. 12:30

    Lunch behind the beachfront

    Eat

    Milmyeon, the cold wheat noodles Busan invented when it could not get buckwheat, or grilled eel. Two streets back from the sand, where the prices halve.

  3. 13:30

    Haeundae Beach

    Nature

    Swim, or walk the length of it and back. Parasols and chairs rent for about ten thousand won a day in season, and on a clear day you can see Tsushima out to the east.

  4. 18:00

    Gwangalli Beach

    Nature

    Arrive before dusk, eat on the sand, and watch the bridge lights come on across the bay. Convenience-store beer on the beach is entirely normal here.

With more time: The old coastal railway between Haeundae and Songjeong has been turned into a slow tourist train with an elevated capsule running above it, and it is the prettiest way to cover that stretch of shoreline if you would rather not walk.

Day 4 in Busan

The war cemetery, the city museum, and the train

The last morning explains the rest of the city. Busan held when the rest of the peninsula did not, and the foreign soldiers who died holding it are buried a few stops from the station, in the only cemetery of its kind anywhere.

It is a quiet, formal place, laid out by nation, and it takes an hour. There is a dress code and it is enforced: no shorts, no flip-flops, no miniskirts. The city museum next door picks the story up either side of the war, from the prehistoric shell mounds to the port city of today.

  1. 09:30

    United Nations Memorial Cemetery (UNMCK)

    Historic

    More than two thousand graves, arranged by country, with a memorial hall explaining who came and why. Bus from the metro exit, and dress as you would for a funeral.

  2. 11:00

    Busan Museum

    Culture

    Busan from the shell mounds to the container terminal, in a museum ten minutes' walk from the cemetery. Enough for an hour before you head for the train.

  3. 13:00

    Metro back to Busan Station

    Travel

    Twenty minutes on line 2 and a change, or fifteen in a taxi. KTX services to Seoul run at least twice an hour through the afternoon.

With more time: With a later train, Beomeosa is the alternative morning: a mountain temple founded in the seventh century, up in the pines on the northern edge of the city and reached from the last stop but one on line 1.

Before you go

Getting in

The KTX from Seoul takes under three hours and drops you at Busan Station, which is downtown, a short metro ride from the fish market and walking distance from the port. It costs a little more than flying once you count the trip out to the airports, and it is far less trouble.

Gimhae International Airport, west of the city, handles domestic flights and a good spread of routes to Japan, China and Southeast Asia. A light rail line links it to the metro.

Getting around

Buy a Cashbee card at any convenience store or metro station, or use the T-money card you already have from Seoul. Both work on the metro and the buses, and both are cheaper than paying cash.

Metro line 1 runs from the north of the city down through Busan Station to Nampo and Jagalchi, which covers half of this trip. Line 2 runs east along the coast to Gwangalli and Haeundae, which covers most of the rest. The temple on the east coast and the village at Gamcheon are the two places you will need a bus for.

When to go

The beaches are heaving in late July and early August, when the whole country takes its holiday at once, and the water is warm enough to be worth it. May, June and September give you the same coast with room to put a towel down.

October is the best month here: clear, dry, and the film festival takes over the city for the first ten days of it. Winter is cold but far gentler than Seoul, and the beaches are empty and good for walking.

What to eat

Busan food comes from the war. Dwaeji gukbap, a milky pork broth over rice, and milmyeon, cold wheat noodles, were both refugee cooking and are both now the city's signature dishes. Eat them in a shop with a queue outside and no English sign.

Then there is the sea: grilled eel, live octopus, hoe (raw fish) eaten with chilli paste and sesame oil rather than soy. Ssiat hotteok, a fried pancake split open and packed with seeds, is the street snack to find in the Nampo alleys.

The shape of a good day here is a hill in the morning and water in the evening, with something out of the sea in between. The city is long, the metro is cheap, and nothing needs to be booked.

If you have a fifth day, spend it going north to the old Silla capital rather than adding another beach. The beaches are not going anywhere.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Busan or Seoul?
Both, if you can. They are under three hours apart by train and completely unalike: Seoul is dense, formal and historic, Busan is coastal, sprawling and much more casual. If you only have a week in Korea, four days in Seoul and three here is a good split.
Is four days enough?
Yes for the city itself. Four days covers the markets, the hillside village, the temple, two beaches and the war cemetery without rushing. What it does not leave room for is Gyeongju, an hour north, which needs a night of its own.
When can I swim?
The official beach season runs from the start of July to the end of August, which is when the lifeguards and the rental stalls are out and when the sand disappears under people. The water is still swimmable in June and September, with far more room.
Do I need to book anything?
Almost nothing here is ticketed in advance. The exceptions are hotels in late July and August, when the whole country is on this coast, and anything at all during the film festival in October.
Can I rearrange these days?
Easily, and you may want to: the east coast day is much better in clear weather and the markets do not care what the sky is doing. Copy the four days into JourneyComposer and swap them around by forecast.