Busan, S. Korea

I must apologize for the hiatus in the update of this site. I took some well-deserved vacation. One of the last places I visited on my trips was Busan, South Korea, to see some friends.

Although by reading this introduction, it may look like it has nothing to do with Yokohama at first glance, it’s actually quite the opposite. When I lived in Busan a few years ago, little did I know that Busan and Yokohama had been partner cities since 2006. Their main fields of cooperation are exchange among citizen, tourism, climate change mitigation and urban planning. The cities also worked hand in hand during APEC 2010 in Yokohama.

Busan, with its 3.6 million people, is the second biggest city in South Korea. It is the largest container port in South Korea, ranking 5th among the world’s major ports with over 14 million TEU in 2010– almost 75% of all container throughput in South Korea – a growth of 18.2% compared with 2009. In the last 10 years, Busan has seen an average of 12,700 vessels enter its port annually.

Let’s see the similarities between Busan and Yokohama.
Population: check.
Container port: check.
Port international passenger terminal: check.
Center for international conventions: check.
APEC host city: check.
Baseball stadium: check.
30 minutes from an international airport: check.
Of course, there are also many differences between Busan and Yokohama, but I am rather amazed their similarity.

I know South Korea is hardly synonymous with coffee, but for me, Busan is the only place in the world (outside of Montreal) where I was able to find a nice place to enjoy a cup of coffee. And I used to go every day when I lived there! Come on, Yokohama! Show me what you’ve got in the coffee department!

(Cette page en français)

Note: The statistics of this entry are based on data from 2012. I could unfortunately not find the page where it originally came from.