Busan (South Korea)
12 July 2025
A Saturday in Busan, and a rarity
for me, a full day dedicated to doing anything that came to mind in my ‘Busan
discovery’. For this morning, I was
going to dedicate some time to an interesting, vibrant and somewhat beatnik
area of Busan, Gamcheon Cultural Village. Sometimes called the
‘Santorini of Korea’… but for me….not quite, I more aligned it to being akin
the ‘Valparaiso of Chile’ or the ‘La Boca of Buenos Aires’, but a little more
of that shortly.
Waking up relatively early, I
allowed myself time to take in the spectacular Haeundae Beach from the Mipo
Oceanside Hotel. Its always a pleasure to give yourself the opportunity to
absorb your surrounding unimpeded and without haste. Travel can so often be
compartmentalised into check-box items, snippets of manufactured or tokenistic
highlights, where your experience is more about tolerating the process and the
crowds. These days I find a lot of pleasure in those quiet, reflective moments.
With the morning sun beating down on the beach, the full sounds of the waves
hitting the shore and the faint punctuation of early the early morning active
crowd, this made for a great start to the day.
I left the hotel about 0830 and
effectively utilised the walk to the station as a bit of a time trial for the
next day as I’d also be out early in order to head to the inter-city bus
station in Nopo. I wanted to test out the walk to Jung-dong station, which on
paper looked like the closer metro stop to the hotel but actually felt, in
testing, like the longer walk. In any case, jumping on the metro at Jung-dong,
I took the green line to Seomyeon station and then changed onto the Orange line
in order to get to the closest metro stop to Gamcheon Village, Toseong station.
I made the perhaps the
whimsically flippant decision to walk from the station to the village, which I
assume by many would been just plain foolhardy. I found relatively quickly that
there was a significant amount of effort that needed to be expelled in order make
the ascent up the hillside just to get to the starting point. At this point it
was about 10:00am, the sun was beaming, and we were easily about 30 degrees….but
hey…you know I like a challenge! I’m also 100% sure that Inga would have
approved of the escapade.
Climbing up out from Toseong
station, guessing my way blindly to where I ‘thought’ the village would be
located, which I occasionally verified with mental picture of the location map
that I downloaded into my brain the night before. With that said, both my
intuition and natural sense of orientation got my up to the village in a
reasonable amount of time, with not a single wrong turn.
Gamcheon Cultural Village – the ‘Santorini of South
Korea’?
My scepticism rises sharply
whenever a person or place is compared to something iconic or universally
recognisable. For example, a soccer player being called ‘The Messi of Surinam’,
or a location being known as the ‘Niagara Falls of Kuala Lumpur’. That
comparison doesn’t do anyone any justice. So lets just leave out the unfair
comparisons and lets discuss what the village it, which a tumbling cascade of brightly
painted houses stacked on steep hillsides overlooking the port, and what makes
it particularly striking is the way rows
of pastel-coloured homes and winding alleyways spill down the slopes, creating
a vibrant patchwork that has become one of Busan’s most recognisable sights.
And for sure, there are visual associations that I have, the vibrancy and
colour remind me of La Boca and Valparaiso, and I’d say the latter is the
closest association – Valparaiso being a port town, built on a number of
slopes, with houses the colours of the rainbow. Gamcheon is Valpariaso-esque and
definitely worth visiting, but its like comparing Tim Cahill to Lionel Messi,
Cahill is a great Aussie football star, and Messi is the greatest of all time.
A little about Gamcheon
The village has its roots in the
1950s, when refugees from the Korean War settled in the area. At that time,
Gamcheon was a poor hillside community where housing was built quickly and
cheaply, with residents making do on the margins of the city. For decades it
remained underdeveloped, known more for its poverty rather than its beauty. However,
that all started to change in 2009, when the government and local artists
launched the "Dreaming of Machu Picchu in Busan" project,
which aimed at transforming the village into a cultural hub. Walls were painted
in bright colours, murals were created, and art installations were placed
throughout the streets. This community-led regeneration brought a sense of
pride to residents while also attracting visitors. And that’s essentially where
we stand today, a major tourist attraction of Busan that draws in travellers
for its mixture of visual beauty, artistic perspective, history and local life.
I slowly made my way through the
labyrinth of alleyways, steep stairs and streets, appreciate the spectacle.
Filled with museums, hillside café’s and bars, the area offers sweeping views
over the hills out onto the port. I have to say that I enjoyed a leisurely few
hours, stopping for the occasional beverage to once again let it wash over me.
It is interesting how places like
this, or La Boca, or Valparaiso, once neglected, utilise the resilience and
pride of its residents to ‘find a way’, to go beyond just natural aesthetics
and achieve something of world-renowned cultural significance, which in itself
is a story that obviously resonate far beyond Busan and South Korea itself, it
exemplifies how an idea, art and community driven regeneration can transform
hardship into heritage, turning a space marked by poverty into one celebrated
for beauty and cultural expression.
After Gamcheon I made my way back
to Haeundae onto Gunam-ro, where for some reason I felt compelled to make a
lunch stop at a Mexican restaurant, ‘Tejano-Tex-Mex BBQ’, https://www.instagram.com//tejano_tex_mex_bbq/,
which I think drew me in for its rooftop access and view, plus its promise of
fine margaritas.
My afternoon was quite sedate, a
walk down the beach, a bottle of soju in my room, and a watching of the last
few episodes of series 3 of the Squid Games, which I felt was quite a
serendipitous juxtaposition of circumstances.
Gwangalli Beach
In the evening I had planned to
make my way to Gwangalli Beach, primarily to check out the drone shows that run
twice nighty all through the year. In all honesty, I hadn’t done a lot of
research about this area other than the fact that I had assigned myself an
evening to explore, but the moment I arrived, I identified very quicky that I
had shortchanged myself!
The first evening drown show at
8:00pm clearly displayed everything about Gwangalli Beach that I had not
discovered in pre-arrival research. The main road heading to the beach and the
immediate side-streets were filled with people in the 15-20 mins prior to the
show, so much so that I initially commenced viewing from the street across from
the beach. It also noticed that this place was ‘happening’, in a very different
way to Haeundae. Lined with exceptionally stylish bars, restaurants, and
café’s, this placed exuded energy, style and fun. Certainly it didn’t feel
overtly glamourous but there was a sense of style and cool that made the place
immediately intriguing and enjoyable.
Settling into a spot on the sand, I watched as the night sky came alive with geometric mastery. The drone show was nothing short of spectacular, hundreds of lights gliding effortlessly into place, weaving intricate, almost impossible patterns that unfolded above me in luminous precision, all of which being supported by an equally as luminous Gwangan bridge and a flotilla of colourful pleasure craft that made their way into the bay for the nightly event. I thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact I liked it so much that I thought I’d hang around until the second show at 10pm, and not that was at all difficult in a place like this – Gwangalli was happening. Weaving through the streets of heaving humanity, there was a cacophony of sounds, smells, lights. I wondered why this area had escaped my greater scrutiny during my ‘South Korean investigation period’. It definitely warranted more than just an evening, and on reflection, I found myself deliberating if I should have based myself here.
As the evening marched on, I for
some reason locked into to another Mexican style bar/restaurant and whiled away
the hours as Busan moved around me. As an inherent introvert and one predisposed
to quiet reflection, I felt the city pulse and move around me, with me, in the
middle of my bubble.
As the evening unfolded, I found
myself drawn into another Mexican-style bar, where I let the hours slip by as
Busan moved restlessly around me. I’m an inherent introvert, predisposed to
quiet reflection, there I sat within my own bubble, feeling the city’s pulse
thrum and flow around me, with me , yet apart from me. I kind of like that sort
of groove. I like when I choose to be involved or as detached according to my
mood. This was just right.
As the hour approached and the
second drone show took to the air, I found myself a prime position in front of French
windows that opened out onto the beach. The second show even more impressive
than the first as I was in the perfect position to make the most of it.
Post show I walked around the beach,
taking in all in. The fantastically lit neon-lit Gwangan bridge casting a
glittering reflection across the water, melding with the hum of the bars and
restaurants, and the incessant sounds of the waves crashing on the shore. There’s
adventure and stories just waiting to be written all over this neighbourhood. I
mean I walked into a bowling alley located on the 12th floor of a
building – it had an incredible view of the bridge, the beach AND it had a
bowling alley in the sky! I mean really, its as if the universe itself had
scripted the opening line of a great yarn right there in front of me…but alas,
not for tonight. I’m sure there will be another time, in this very place, and
when that day (or night comes), remember I said this, ‘I told you so’.
Gwangalli, if there’s truth in precognition, then I know there’s already a
moment that has left a mark on me enough to understand that you are
significant.
