EH SEO was born and grew up in the southern city of Busan, South Korea, but he has never doubted that she would study and work elsewhere.

“Not only my parents, but my parents wanted everyone to move to Seoul,” said Seo, 32, who left. South KoreaThe second largest city immediately after high school and is now working in the capital. “I wanted to go too, and I have no remorse.”

For most of the twentieth century, Busan was a prosperous center for trade and industry. But the city is now in the midst of the exit of the youth, which has been left by aging faster than any other urban area in a country that already has the lowest fertility rate in the world.

We Thawat Boussan is located on the southeastern end of the Korean Peninsula on the other side of Japan, and the fortunes of Busan have worsened since the 1990s, as local industries suffer from South Korea’s move to a high -tech industrial economy.

Korea’s recruitment information service, a government agency last year, was officially ranked as “at risk of extinction”-when it makes the defect among the working and non-working population the city’s economically unclean.

The city of 3.3 million people launched between 600,000 people between 1995 and 2023. The demographic warns that this trend is accelerating with the progress of the city’s residents and torrents that tighten its grip on the country’s economy.

Busan maintains magic and origins – mountains, beaches, temples, nightlife, famous festivals, films, art, and proximity to Japan and industrial centers collected along the eastern coast of South Korea.

While he was the hometown of the leading blocs in Samsung and LG, one of the 100 largest companies in South Korea is the city headquarters.

“The external flow of youth is getting more in size,” said SEO. “Every time I return, I can see her losing her vitality.”

Busan flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century because of its proximity to Japan – the first bridge of Japanese trade and investment and later to colonialism.

Japanese industrialists have created factories in Busan, producing cheap goods ranging from rubber and shoes to wood. After the defeat of Tokyo in World War II, the Koreans seized the factories, and Busan got an increase in the returnees from Japan.

In 1950, North Korea invaded a second wave of expatriates after the South Korean government declined temporarily from Seoul to Busan. Between 1945 and 1951, the city’s population grew from 280,000 to 840,000.

Busan benefited from the “National Development Strategy” in the 1960s and 1970s, which built an industrial passage between it and Seoul, with Busan Port as a major commercial center for the economy towards export.

However, the city’s wealth has turned further than producing cheap consumer goods in which Busan factories specialize in.

The Korean economy, which is increasingly operating and exporting the most advanced goods by the Samsung Electronics on the outskirts of Seoul.

Universities and research institutes immigrated to meet the demand for skilled workers. Inchon port on the western coast – the closest to Seoul, and more suitable for trading with China – Busan Busan as the leading export center in the country.

“Successive governments have followed the national central policy as a way to maximize competence to compete with Japan and China,” said Busan Li John Seong. “We left behind us.”

Lee Sing Ho, a researcher at government employment information, known as Keis, said that centralization pushed Busan and other regional economic centers in South Korea to a “serial reaction to decline” because of the intensification of competition from China.

“Most of the major regional cities outside the urban area in the country are witnessing a similar phenomenon,” he told me. “The rural areas with a young population were the first to be beaten, followed by small and medium -sized cities, and now hits urban areas like Busan.”

He added that while many young people from Busan can still find manufacturing jobs in other industrial centers in the southeast, women were likely to have to go to Seoul to find the services of the services sector.

Local civil groups argue that the city’s decrease has exacerbated due to the mismanagement of local government.

Child gap

This is the fourth article in a series On the global demographic crisis that waves on the horizon where the levels of the population are reduced

Part 1: Politicians want more children, but their policies limit

Part 2: Kenya – a window in the demographic future of Africa

Part 3: The country that the migration left behind

Part 4: The second city of South Korea is afraid of the demographic disaster

Li Song Han, Secretary -General of the Solidarity of the Busan Civil Group for Social Welfare, said that instead of identifying new growth areas for the local economy in the 1990s, successive mayors sold public lands on the outskirts of the city to developers. Sales feed a real estate boom with money from foreigners who buy luxury apartments on the waterfront as investments.

He told me that the result is to benefit from the owners of the oldest real estate at the expense of the young population who have not yet been on the housing ladder, the expansion of the wealth gap between generations and made it difficult for young people to live in the city.

He told me: “They acted more like real estate developers than mayors.” Busan literally means “many mountains”, but now we call it “the city of many apartments” instead.

Li Sang Ho is from Kis that the Haeundae suburb of the Busan Beach Resort, which was developed as part of the real estate boom in the 1990s, is known as “Copacabana of Korea”, is one of the highest city wings in extinction risk indicator. The index depends on the percentage of the female population between the ages of 20 and 39 years and the population between the ages of 65 or more.

“[Haeundae] “The majority of the local population lives behind the high ends in unparalleled areas, where the city becomes increasingly polarized,” he told me.

But the deputy mayor Lee John-Song said that in the 1980s and 1990s, the main problem in the city was a lack of housing, industrial lands and appropriate transportation links.

Observers note that even Seoul, which was absorbed in youth from all over the country, faces its own demographic crisis because it responds to the brutal competition for the well paid jobs and education by canceling the participation in marriage, parenting and motherhood.

At 0.72, South Korea’s fertility rate – the average number of children that women are expected to give birth in her life – was in 2023 the world’s lowest level. But despite attracting young people from all over the country, the rate of flood of Seoul in 2023 was less – at 0.55. OECD is a fertility rate of 2.1 necessary to ensure a large -scale stable number.

“While Busan’s population is expected to decrease by 33.57 percent between 2020 and 2050, the Seoul population is expected to decrease by 21.45 percent. During the same period. .

“The difference is that in Busan, there will be a much more decline in the population of the work as a percentage of the population as a whole,” Kim said, adding that despite the decrease, the danger of “craft” extinction remained very far away.

Economists say that the decrease in regional economies is more strict because the central model of South Korea no longer seems to be providing the type of gross domestic product required to alleviate the effects of the demographic crisis in the country.

The Korea Bank has reduced the country’s gross domestic product growth for 2025 to 1.6-1.7 percent, decreasing from a 2.3 percent drop from a year.

Central Bank Governor I tell the Financial Times Last year, it was necessary that “radical solutions”, including the maximum admission to the university, is one of the most neighborhoods in Seoul in Seoul required to encourage people to leave Seoul and return to the district areas.

The deputy mayor of Busan Lee John Seong said that the city needs more autonomy, including the transfer of the organizational forces to the financial sector to attract skilled young workers.

He also said that immigration was “decisive”, as plans are set for special regional visas for students and skilled workers from Southeast Asia.

But Lee Sang is a bag that he said without repairing the basic problem of unbalanced regional development, the migrants-like the local population-simply end up to Seoul.

The political class in the country, which is still distracted from the repercussions of President Yun Suk Yol Declaration of failed martial laws in DecemberShow a few signs that he was able to provide a deep root restructuring to the country’s economy.

Meanwhile, the Bosnians like Yang Mi-Sook, the leader of the local citizens’ campaign group, deported the city’s decline with thousands of departure every month.

She said, “It is very sad and frustrated.” “The government must recognize that we have a serious problem – after all, with no citizens leaving, we will not need politicians either.”