Busan, mountains falling into the sea

Busan is built on the gaps between hills and water, and it feels nothing like Seoul: saltier, looser, permanently half on holiday. Haeundae is the famous beach, a curve of sand under a wall of apartment towers, but locals often prefer Gwangalli, where you eat raw fish and drink beer facing the illuminated Gwangan Bridge. East of Haeundae, the Blueline Park train runs along the old coastal railway with the sea a few metres from the window.

The city's heart is still the harbour. Jagalchi Fish Market is the biggest in Korea, run largely by women who have sold here for generations; pick something from a tank downstairs and it is prepared upstairs as hoe, sliced raw with sesame leaves and chilli paste. Around it, Gukje Market and BIFF Square sell everything from blankets to ssiat hotteok — a fried sweet pancake stuffed with seeds — and the film festival, now centred on the Busan Cinema Center in Haeundae, still holds events here each October.

On a hillside above Nampo, Gamcheon Culture Village is the image that sells Busan: a former refugee settlement whose houses now step down the slope in pastel blocks, filled with murals, tiny galleries and cafés. Very different in mood, Haedong Yonggungsa sits directly on the rocks of the east coast, one of the rare Korean temples built at the sea rather than in the mountains, while Beomeosa is the classic forested monastery on Geumjeongsan.

Eat dwaeji gukbap, the pork-and-rice soup Busan made its own during the Korean War, and walk the Igidae coastal path for the skyline from the water.