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Busan, South Korea: A Gamcheon walking tour and New Year sunrise at Haeundae

Busan twice in one year: a no-commentary walk through Gamcheon, Seomyeon and Nampo-dong, the New Year sunrise on Haeundae and an autumn return to the hillside.

2024 was the year we came to Busan twice: once at dawn on the first of January with half the city, and again in the autumn. We’d already been coming since 2020, but this is the trip we finally filmed properly.

Busan is a city best understood on foot, so that’s how we filmed it, no commentary, just the real sounds of Korea’s great southern port city.

A no-commentary walk through Busan: Seomyeon, Gamcheon and Nampo-dong. Watch on YouTube

The walk begins in Gamcheon Culture Village, the famous hillside of colourful stacked houses threaded with art and narrow lanes. It’s become one of Korea’s most photographed places, but wandering it in person, past everyday life happening between the murals, is a different experience from the photos.

From there the film moves through the streets of Seomyeon at night, all shopping, restaurants and neon; down into the underground shopping arcades; through Lotte Mall with its indoor fountain; and out to a glimpse of Busan Port in the Nampo-dong area, where the city meets the sea.

If you’re weighing up whether Busan deserves days of its own on a Korea trip rather than a day trip from Seoul, it does. Pair it with nearby Jinju and the slow island calm of Namhae for a southern route most visitors miss.

The short version of why Busan earns its own days. Watch on YouTube

Thirty seconds of the case for Busan over Seoul: Gamcheon Culture Village, the Haeundae Sky Capsule, the city views from Sky X, Lotte World Mall and the K Link Festival, with a 3am ramyeon stop thrown in. It’s the same hillside and the same coastline as the walking film above, just at speed.

New Year sunrise, January 2024

Watching the first sunrise of the year on Haeundae beach is a proper Korean tradition, and it turns out you won’t be doing it quietly or alone.

Thousands of people gathered on Haeundae beach at dawn waiting for the first sunrise of the new year
New Year's morning 2024: half of Busan on Haeundae beach, waiting for the first sunrise of the year.
Inga and Dileep with arms spread wide on a wooden deck on Dongbaekseom, Haeundae's skyscrapers across the bay
Winter sun on Dongbaekseom the next day, with Haeundae's skyline photobombing as usual.

Back for autumn, October 2024

Ten months later we were back on the hillside from the film, this time with a camera and no crowd to fight.

The pastel stacked houses of Gamcheon Culture Village covering a green hillside in Busan under a white sky
October 2024, back on the Gamcheon hillside from the film. The houses still look like someone spilled a paint chart.
Inga sitting beside the Little Prince statue on a yellow railing above Gamcheon Culture Village, the fox statue and the port in the distance
The Little Prince holds the best seat in Gamcheon, and yes, there's a queue to share it.

The rest of these trips, film by film

We kept coming back, and everything else we filmed around Busan and across Korea now has a page of its own.

There’s more from this trip on our YouTube channel, we film the real sights and sounds, no fluff. You’ll also find us on TikTok and Instagram.