Busan Faces Growing Youth Exodus Despite City Efforts

Busan, South Korea — There is no singular reason behind it. Young people leave Busan for many different purposes—some follow jobs, others follow peers. But in the aggregate, the direction is consistent. And the city they leave behind is noticing.

Between 2023 and 2025, Busan experienced a sustained net outflow of residents in their 20s and 30s. In 2024 alone, the number exceeded 8,500. That figure, while not unprecedented, marked a continuation of a multi-year trend. The city’s overall population decline has mirrored this, driven more by migration than birth rate. And nearly 70% of those departing headed to the capital region.

Youth and International Student Statistics: Busan vs. Seoul (2023–2025)

Comparisons between Busan and Seoul are often framed as unfair. The capital hosts national institutions, corporate headquarters, and a denser job market. Still, for recent graduates, the wage gap is tangible. In 2024, average entry-level salaries in Busan were over 20% lower than in Seoul. Over time, the difference compounds. After five years in the workforce, an employee in Seoul may be earning close to 40% more than a peer in Busan with comparable experience and qualifications.

This disparity does not only reflect differences in cost of living or firm size. It also points to concentration of industries. Busan’s employment market continues to rely heavily on logistics, shipbuilding, port services, and mid-scale manufacturing. These remain crucial sectors, but their employment growth has been slower than fields such as IT, media, finance, or advanced services. Those high-growth sectors, increasingly aligned with youth career preferences, remain clustered in the capital.

The result is not just fewer jobs—but narrower types of jobs.

The challenge extends beyond domestic graduates. Busan has made efforts to attract international students through scholarship programs and municipal campaigns. Despite that, as of 2024, the city hosted fewer than 15,000 foreign students, compared to over 90,000 in the capital region. The imbalance is structural. Students gravitate not only to education, but to employment ecosystems. Busan offers strong undergraduate institutions and specialized programs in fields such as ocean engineering and logistics. However, when it comes to post-study employment, career transition support remains uneven.

Data collected in 2023 indicated that nearly 59% of international students studying in Busan expressed a willingness to remain after graduation. But the reality suggests otherwise. Visa pathways remain rigid, and many students lack access to formal job pipelines or field-specific internships. As a result, post-graduation retention remains low.

In response, the city introduced initiatives such as “Study Busan 30K,” aimed at attracting and retaining international talent. The project includes expanded job fairs, visa consultation services, and university-industry linkages. Similarly, for domestic youth, Busan’s “Youth G-Dae” platform consolidated over 120 programs under a single brand. These include rental assistance, matched savings for employment seekers, and local job matching portals.

Despite this, implementation remains fragmented. Most youth support programs are managed at the ward or university level. There is no central placement service equivalent to those in metropolitan Seoul. Moreover, employers in Busan have been slower to adopt internship-to-job pathways common elsewhere.

The structural differences between the two cities extend into budget and policy infrastructure. In 2023, Seoul’s youth policy budget exceeded ₩890 billion. Busan’s was under one-third of that. Beyond numbers, however, is integration. Seoul’s programs connect housing, career development, startup incubation, and vocational training through city-wide networks. In Busan, such systems remain siloed.

For Busan to retain talent—both domestic and international—it must compete less with individual benefits and more with systems. A city where job access, growth opportunity, and life planning are interlinked will always appear more viable to someone at the start of their career. And those systems are not built in a single budget cycle.

The city retains advantages worth noting. Its universities are respected. Its industries, though traditional, are stable. Living costs are lower than Seoul. Quality of life remains a draw. But without structural reform in employment diversity and integration, those advantages may not outweigh the lure of long-term upward mobility elsewhere.

Migration is not inherently negative. Movement between regions is natural in any dynamic economy. The concern arises when movement consistently flows in one direction, and when local conditions no longer support return.

Busan still holds the pieces of a viable future for its younger generations. The question is whether it can assemble them fast enough to matter.