Jennifer Sciubba: Why Busan’s Future Needs More Than Crisis Thinking

“There’s also a potential downside of seeing this demographic shift as a crisis. Crisis can legitimate extreme policy responses.”

A Generation Raised for Growth, Living Through Decline

In 1992, classrooms in Busan’s older neighborhoods still ran on split schedules—morning and afternoon shifts to manage the overflow. Backpacks hung from shared hooks. Desks spilled into hallways. The streets outside echoed with children’s voices. Korea’s population, like its economy, was still climbing.

That year marked a subtle demographic turning point. The state had begun easing away from decades of population control, yet family planning posters still lingered in public clinics. Growth, it seemed, was the atmosphere itself—taken for granted, expected to continue. The formula was clear: study hard, land a job, start a family. Cities like Busan kept rising—more schools, more apartments, more people.

But for those born in the 1980s, that early sense of certainty didn’t last. By the time they reached adolescence, the momentum had begun to slow. The 1997 financial crisis cut deeper than the markets—it unsettled homes. Parents lost jobs. Dreams were downsized. And just as the future began to wobble, something else accelerated: broadband internet, PC rooms, mobile phones. The world opened up and fractured, all at once. 

For this generation, the path to adulthood no longer followed a script. The old sequence—education, employment, marriage, children—didn’t collapse, but it scattered. They didn’t reject it out of rebellion, but navigated around it out of necessity. Marriage moved from milestone to question mark. Parenthood became optional. Hesitation became habit.

By the time the 1990s generation came of age, those questions had calcified into norms. They didn’t unlearn the old assumptions—they never fully adopted them. Their digital fluency gave them more choice, but less structure. What had begun as individual recalibration became a collective pattern.

In cities like Busan, the evidence wasn’t abstract—it was spatial. Inner districts like Jung-gu, Dong-gu, Seo-gu, and Yeongdo began to quiet. Schools once bursting with double shifts started to close. Commercial streets around Pusan National University thinned out. These weren’t scenes of collapse, but of slow withdrawal. The hum of family life gave way to the hush of a city learning to live after growth.

But understanding where this trajectory might lead requires more than observation—it needs perspective. Not just demographic data, but how we respond to it. That’s where Dr. Jennifer Sciubba, a global expert in political demography, offers critical insight. Her research doesn’t just explain population decline; it asks what kind of imagination cities need once growth is no longer a given.

A Generation Without Anchors

They didn’t decide to turn away from marriage. It just became harder to see where it might fit. For those born in the 1980s, stability was not something they resisted—it was something they expected, because it’s what they were told to prepare for. But as they moved into adulthood, the ground had already begun to shift. After the 1997 financial crisis, some parents never returned to the same work. Savings were used up. Expectations were revised quietly, and often permanently.

This generation didn’t stop believing in stability; they learned it no longer guaranteed anything. Some managed to secure jobs, buy homes, and start families. But others cycled through short-term contracts, moved repeatedly, or delayed plans indefinitely. There wasn’t a clear breaking point—just a slow redefinition of what seemed realistic. Incomes fluctuated, housing prices climbed unpredictably, and the pressure to adapt quietly replaced the idea of progress. What once felt like a shared path began to blur, especially for those without family wealth or a lucky break.

By the time the 1990s generation came of age, that uncertainty had already hardened into normalcy. These were the first to grow up online, the first to navigate adult life without inherited outlines. They didn’t question marriage or family so much as grow up without ever expecting them. What had been a delay for their older siblings had become default. In districts like Dong-gu or Jung-gu, the birthrate now sits below 0.6—a figure that signals more than changing preferences. But that number alone doesn’t explain the shape of things. It’s not about choice in isolation. It’s about conditions.

Busan Population & Fertility (2023–2025)

Among all autonomous districts in Busan, Jung-gu had the lowest fertility rate in 2024, with a rate of just 0.30.

In apartments once built for new families, it’s now common to find only older couples or single adults. The playgrounds are quiet. Some buildings remain well-kept, others are slowly falling into disuse. Certain schools have consolidated, others have closed entirely. In commercial zones that once relied on weekend crowds, the shutters stay down. These aren’t signs of sudden collapse, but of gradual retreat. There are fewer children, fewer strollers, fewer reasons for shops to stay open. This isn’t a rural village—it’s the inner city of Korea’s second-largest metropolis.

The city hasn’t disappeared. It’s just that the people it was built for have begun to leave, or never arrived. And those who remain often carry the weight of things that no longer function: apartments too large, services too empty, expectations too far from reach. The generational rhythm that once moved people through education, employment, and family has slowed unevenly, breaking in some places while holding elsewhere.

What we see now in Busan is not only a demographic trend, but a kind of social stalling. One generation adapted to instability. The next grew up inside it. And the result is not just in numbers, but in the way certain parts of the city have grown quieter—not as a crisis, but as a condition.

That condition—its causes, and what might follow—leads us to ask what role the city itself plays in either supporting or stalling change. If marriage and family have become distant for so many, how much of that is shaped by individual decisions, and how much by the spaces we live in, the policies that shape them, and the expectations embedded in both?

A City Not Built to Keep Them

The story of Busan’s decline is not one of disaster, but of quiet design. It’s not that the city collapsed—it’s that it stopped renewing itself. For years, the assumption was that growth would naturally return. That young people would settle again. That births would rebound. But those things didn’t happen—and the city wasn’t structured to ask why.

In older neighborhoods, the signs are spatial and small. A bakery that no longer opens on weekdays. A hagwon building turned into a storage lot. A daycare center converted into a café that mostly serves the elderly. The rooms are still there, but their purpose has shifted—or disappeared altogether.

Some rents are cheaper now, but not enough to make staying worthwhile. Affordability alone doesn’t build a future. Not when jobs are scarce, or when schools are closing, or when a sense of forward motion is missing. In places like Yeongdo or Seo-gu, what’s left behind isn’t abandonment—it’s residue. Buildings remain, but the people they were built for have moved on, or never arrived.

Young people didn’t leave because they wanted something bigger. Many left because they couldn’t stay. Job markets narrowed. Public investment favored the capital. The industries that once anchored Busan’s middle class—shipping, manufacturing, port logistics—lost ground, or automated. Even its universities began shrinking, not for lack of ambition, but from demographic absence.

And so, a contradiction emerged: cities like Busan kept building, even as the people they were building for disappeared. New towers rose. Old ones emptied out. Apartments stayed unaffordable to many, even as vacancy crept upward. The city expanded physically, but not socially.

Universities have increasingly turned to international students to keep classrooms full. Some departments now rely on them. But few of those students stay after graduation. Visa hurdles, limited job pathways, and thin support systems make long-term settlement unlikely. And while the number of multicultural families in Busan has grown, real integration remains incomplete. Language barriers persist. Discrimination, while more subtle than in the past, hasn’t fully faded.

Immigration has begun to appear in political speeches as a possible remedy to population loss. But that’s the easy part—naming the idea. The hard part is building a city that can hold it. As it stands, many foreign students and workers remain temporary, hovering at the margins of neighborhoods that aren’t sure how to receive them.

What it means to “stay” in Busan today is different from what it meant a generation ago. For many young adults, it means staying with their parents well into their thirties. It means stitching together short-term jobs, or studying for exams with no guarantee. It means watching your childhood neighborhood become unrecognizable—not because it transformed, but because it thinned.

This isn’t just about planning failure. It’s about the assumptions that shaped the city over decades. Which regions were invested in. Which cities were imagined as futures. And which were left to drift. Busan wasn’t built to shrink—but now it has to figure out how to survive that reality.

The city still has its buildings, its roads, its skyline. But the life they were meant to hold—the density of hope, of young voices, of future plans—that has slipped away. What remains is something slower, quieter, and harder to measure. A kind of spatial echo, where infrastructure outlives its era.

And yet, this isn’t unique to Busan. Cities across Korea and beyond are facing similar questions. What does it mean to plan for decline, not just growth? Who gets to stay, and on what terms? And if new people arrive, what kind of city will they be arriving into?

The tension in Busan is not simply demographic—it’s systemic. The infrastructure remains, but the momentum that once animated it is gone. To understand what that gap reveals, and what might fill it, we look beyond the city, to the broader frameworks of policy, perception, and possibility.

Crisis Isn’t the End

Insights from Dr. Jennifer Sciubba

The shifts in Busan are visible, measurable, and spatial—but what they really ask of us is not simply analysis, but imagination. Not just a diagnosis, but direction. That’s where we turn to Dr. Jennifer Sciubba, a leading scholar of demographic change, whose work invites us to rethink what cities owe to the people still trying to stay.

The numbers alone don’t explain it. What matters is how we frame them. When population decline is cast as crisis, it can spark urgency—but it can also narrow the imagination. This is where Dr. Jennifer Sciubba, a global expert in political demography, begins.

“The useful thing about crisis is that it can spur action. We even see this in our individual lives, where a health crisis, for example, can lead us to make positive, necessary changes that we’ve known needed to happen but have put off. Thus far, I have not seen much evidence from around the world that governments, companies, or communities are responding in coordinated ways that really promote resilience. There are some examples, but if painting with a broad brush it seems that most are either not realizing the demographic shift is permanent, or are responding out of fear and trying to reverse it by encouraging births. I’m hopeful that as awareness spreads we will get there, and start seeing those innovative policy responses.”

Her point is clear: crisis can provoke action, but action doesn’t always mean adaptation. Too often, the policy impulse is to reverse the decline, not to reimagine what comes after it.

“There’s also a potential downside of seeing this demographic shift as a crisis. Crisis can legitimate extreme policy responses. We don’t want to see governments panic and start restricting individual rights around reproduction, for example.”

From there, Dr. Sciubba turns to one of the most sensitive tools in the demographic response toolkit: immigration. In Korea, where ethnic and cultural homogeneity have historically shaped national identity, the conversation around immigration is especially fraught.

“Immigration is very much a political choice, and one that governments have much more control over than they do birth trends. While immigration can help fill skills shortages in the labor force, it does bring social and cultural changes to a community. In Korea’s case, the addition of immigrants could revitalize and help Korea deepen ties with other countries, ensuring that Korea has a global presence. But we do know from examples around the world that immigration is politically contentious because of the changes that newcomers bring—or even just the perception of changes. Often, political leaders will use immigrants as scapegoats to further their political agendas. What we want to avoid is a situation where stakeholders feel there’s a zero-sum tradeoff between the economic growth and social harmony and that has to be carefully managed.”

One of the key problems, she notes, is the mismatch between where immigration is managed and where its impact is most directly felt.

“I think much of the problem is that immigration policy is set at the national level, but the effects of immigration are felt at the local level. Communities need more resources to help with integration in schools, for example, and communities, whether the local government or civic associations, need to be intentional about integrating immigrants into the local community, offering adequate support for the immigrants themselves and the natives in order to smooth the transition. That often doesn’t happen and when housing prices go up, schools are stressed, and communities perceive rapid cultural shifts, resentment against outsiders builds and can turn into political conflict. That hurts both natives and newcomers.”

In Busan, where older districts face declining populations and aging residents, the question isn’t just who lives there—but who could, and under what terms. Around the world, cities are grappling with the same basic pattern: how to remain livable as the momentum of growth recedes.

“This is an area that PRB is just starting to study in earnest. There are examples of cities recovering from population loss incurred during the pandemic, which is another, yet related story. Several cities, such as Tulsa, Oklahoma in the United States, have implemented targeted programs to attract newcomers. Some of these have slowed population losses but there’s not much evidence that we’ve seen of sustained growth after depopulation. That’s particularly the case because the demographic backdrop is changing, and cities would be wise to adjust their expectations accordingly. With over 60 countries and territories already past peak population, if some of their cities are growing then others will shrink—if their growth strategy is to attract domestic migrants then one city will win while the others lose. Decline is still largely inevitable—it just depends on the time horizon we're looking at. If we take a long enough temporal scope, then it is more so about minimizing the consequences of decline than trying to reverse it.”

That long-term lens is often missing from public conversation. So is the focus on flexibility and local governance.

“The more I research these demographic changes, the less I am convinced that centralized policy making will suffice. Demographic changes and policies are both felt at the local level, and circumstances in individual communities can differ greatly. Local zoning laws, for example, can really change the landscape of a city. People live their lives locally, so how people experience their neighborhoods—the places they live, work, and play—is important. Flexibility is key to resilience. Local leaders need to be empowered to experiment.”

The future of Busan, then, will not be about whether it can return to a time of overflowing schools or bustling playgrounds. That time may not return. The question is whether it can adapt with clarity and imagination—grounded not in panic, but in possibility. 

Her insights don’t just outline the consequences of demographic decline—they ask who gets to respond, and how. For cities like Busan, the question is no longer whether growth will return. It’s whether the city can reshape itself around the realities already here. In that, crisis isn’t the end. It might just be the beginning of a different kind of city.

The question is no longer how to restore what was lost, but how to build what’s still possible—with fewer people, but clearer purpose.