Busan Ranks Among World's Top 5 Destinations, But Tourists Complain About This

[Anchor]

Interest in Busan is heating up, with the city recently selected as the world's fifth-best travel destination in a survey. However, the poor infrastructure of Mount Hwangnyeong, which has gained attention among foreign tourists as a night view hotspot, has come under fire.

KNN reporter Kim Min-sung has the story.

[Reporter]

This is the narrow road leading from Mulmanggol in Busan to the summit of Mount Hwangnyeong.

Even during the daytime, village buses and passenger cars constantly mix together.

Lines of illegally parked vehicles line both sides of the already narrow road.

Cars passing through here are easily blocked not only by oncoming traffic, but also by these illegally parked vehicles.

[Mulmanggol Resident: These days, a lot of foreign people ride in cars up the mountain. But we can't just tell them not to drive cars.]

When night falls, the situation becomes even more severe.

Cars get mixed up on the narrow road, frequently turning it into chaos.

While the Busan Metropolitan Government is agonizing over traffic measures such as increasing the number of village buses, vehicles can still only reach halfway up the mountain due to the steep slopes.

Because of this, voices are rising that the introduction of the Mount Hwangnyeong cable car, which had been practically suspended, should be pursued once again.

Aside from transportation, the meager tourism infrastructure is also a problem.

Along with poorly equipped public restrooms, the signboards explaining the history of the Mount Hwangnyeong Beacon Mound are written only in Korean, drawing complaints from many foreign tourists.

[Ruka / Australia: I like reading information boards when I go traveling. If it were in English, I would have read it to understand what it means. It's especially important to know why this facility is here and what it signifies.]

Busan was recently selected as the world's fifth-best travel destination, but the reality of Mount Hwangnyeong, which makes visitors frown in various ways, does not match its status.

[Lee Hyun-jung / Head of Tourism Policy Division, Busan Metropolitan Government: Next year, we plan to expand the budget for improving tourism reception capacity through a district-county public contest project.]

Prompt measures at the Busan city level have become urgent.

(Camera footage by Hwang Tae-chul / KNN)

KNN, Kim Min-sung
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.