Busan

Busan is the rare major city with genuinely good beaches inside it. Haeundae is the famous one — a broad arc of sand backed by towers, packed through the summer and pleasant out of season, with an aquarium at one end and a coastal path that runs east around the headland. Gwangalli is the better evening: it faces the long Gwangan Bridge, which is lit after dark, and the streets behind it hold the bars, cafés and small restaurants. Between them, the old coastal railway has been converted into a walking route and a slow tourist train along the cliffs.

Korea's largest fish market and the best hour in the city. The ground floor is tanks and trays — live fish, octopus, sea squirts, things you will not be able to name — presided over by the women who have traditionally run the trade here. The system is simple: buy downstairs, take it upstairs, and a restaurant on the floor above prepares it for a cooking fee. Go in the morning for the market at work, or the evening for eating. The surrounding streets hold the dried-seafood stalls and Gukje market, which is the city's sprawling general bazaar.

Most Korean temples sit in mountain forest; this one is built onto the coastal rocks north-east of the city, with the sea breaking below the shrine halls and a stone stairway down through a gate to the water. That inversion is why it is worth the trip out. It is popular and can be crowded, so go early in the day; sunrise here is a genuine local outing. Combine it with the coast further out or with the modern quarter around Centum City on the way back, since it sits well beyond the beaches.

A steep hillside of small painted houses in tight lanes, repainted and reworked into an arts quarter, and now one of the images of the city. Two things are worth knowing before going. It is a genuine residential neighbourhood — people live behind those doors, and the signage asking for quiet in the alleys is meant. And it is properly steep: expect stairs, wear shoes for them, and start at the top by bus so you walk down rather than up. Go on a weekday morning if you can; weekends are shoulder to shoulder.

Busan's food is distinct from Seoul's. Dwaeji gukbap, a milky pork-bone soup with rice, is the city's signature and is eaten at any hour in dedicated shops. Milmyeon is the local wheat-noodle answer to cold buckwheat noodles, invented here. Ssiat hotteok — the sweet pancake stuffed with seeds — belongs to the Nampo-dong street stalls, and eomuk, the fish cake, is a Busan speciality sold everywhere including in the station. Add raw fish by the plate at Jagalchi and a beer on the Gwangalli sand, and you have the city's eating in a day.

Busan hosts Asia's largest film festival each autumn, centred on the Busan Cinema Center in the Centum City district, whose vast cantilevered roof is worth seeing lit at night whether or not there is a screening. The same district holds an enormous department store and the city's newer architecture. For the older texture, Bosu-dong Book Street stacks second-hand books through narrow alleys, and Gukje Market sprawls across blocks near Jagalchi selling everything. The two halves of the city — market and modern — sit twenty minutes apart on the metro.

Busan is the natural base for the south-east. Gyeongju, an hour or so away, was the capital of an ancient kingdom and is essentially an open-air museum of burial mounds, temples and a grotto in the hills — the single best day trip in the region. Closer, Taejongdae on the southern headland gives cliff walks and sea views, and the fishing villages and beaches east along the coast are quieter than Haeundae. The high-speed train reaches Seoul in around two and a half hours, which makes a two-city trip easy in either direction.

Spring and autumn are the seasons — mild, clear and comfortable, with the film festival in October. Summer is hot, humid and busy, and this coast is exposed to typhoons in late summer, which occasionally close beaches and disrupt flights for a day or two. Winter is cold but far milder than Seoul and rarely snowbound. The metro is straightforward, signed in English and covers the beaches, the market and Centum City; a rechargeable transit card works on metro and buses. The city is long rather than compact, so plan by district rather than criss-crossing.