Why Busan has no dedicated body

Busan reduced 25 agencies to 21. It knows how to trim. And yet for twenty-six years, three mayors repeated the same promise, and no single body was built to keep it. The functions exist. The organization does not. This essay is the seventh installment of Busanloop's "18 Questions for Next Busan" series, published nine days before the June 3, 2026 Busan mayoral election. It compares the 26-year Maritime Capital promise of Busan with Fukuoka's 13-year operational structure of Startup City Fukuoka — a three-tier system spanning the City Hall planning division, the Fukuoka Asian Urban Research Center (URC), and public-private execution venues. The essay analyzes how Busan has distributed functions across multiple bodies (Maritime Capital Policy Division with a 17.1 billion won budget, Shipping & Ports Division with 28.7 billion won, Busan Global City Foundation, Busan Economic Promotion Agency, Busan Center for Creative Economy & Innovation) without building a single accountable control tower, while authority over Busan Port itself resides with the Busan Port Authority (BPA) and the Busan Regional Office of Oceans and Fisheries rather than the city. Korean original: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20386768