Busan burst onto the international stage about a year ago, when supergroup BTS played its last show there before going on hiatus. An estimated 50 million people worldwide viewed the concert, held to support the city’s bid to host the 2030 World Expo. In the time since, posters boosting Busan’s effort popped up all over, even on the side of double-decker buses in London. The city fast-tracked projects: A planned airport is now slated for 2029, five years ahead of schedule; a new bullet train is also on the way, along with a 1,123-foot skyscraper, which will be the third-highest in the country.
On Nov. 28, organizers announced that Busan had lost the Expo to Riyadh. But all the publicity helped raise the profile of this port city whose metropolitan area, South Korea’s second largest, is home to about 3.5 million people.
