Busan Sea Festival opens Friday at Dadaepo Beach for 30th edition

Busan's signature summer event, the 30th Busan Sea Festival, will run Friday through Aug. 13 at Dadaepo Beach.

The festival opens with the Dadae Fireworks Show, a 17-minute maritime wide-screen display launched from three barges beginning at 8 p.m. Friday.

Along the beach, the Dadaepo Pojangmacha food village will offer a variety of dishes against the backdrop of Busan's night sea, with seating for 2,000. Its stage will host performances across a range of genres Aug. 8 and 9, featuring artists including Heize, Paul Kim, Oops Gets, Band Girin and Tokcapella.

The Sunset Beach Club — comprising a nightclub-style Sunset Club and a relaxed Sunset Pub lounge — will offer a stay-and-enjoy space with house DJ sets, wellness experiences including DIY aromatherapy, perfume-making, Sunset Move and mini-ball barre, and a healthy food zone.

Cheongchun Haebang Zone (Youth Liberation Zone), a university joint campus festival running Aug. 10 and 11, brings together 10 Busan universities including Pusan National University, Pukyong National University, Dong-A University and Kyungsung University. Students will plan and run campus pojangmacha stalls, band and dance club performances, and special concerts by Yang Hong-won and Han Yo-han.

On Aug. 12, the Dadaepo Folk Rock Concert — featuring Bicycle Riding Scenery and the Kim Jang-hoon Band — will offer acoustic sounds against a sunset backdrop. The festival closes Aug. 13 at 7 p.m. with Yeollin Bada Yeollin Eumakhoe, an open concert for all generations featuring the Saha-gu and Yeongdo-gu district children's choirs and the Junior Concert Choir.

For visitor safety, the city of Busan will restrict one lane on Dadae-ro and close three nearby public parking lots from 4 p.m. Friday. Beach attendance will be capped at 35,000; anyone turned away will be directed to nearby viewing areas such as the Gouni Ecological Trail, from which the fireworks are also visible. Authorities are also urging festivalgoers to use public transportation on the day.

Mayor Jeon Jae-soo said he hopes visitors will experience not only the charms of Dadaepo and western Busan but also the city's future as "a city of youth and the sea" — one advancing through initiatives such as attracting maritime companies. "I will work to make Busan a global maritime tourism city that the world will want to visit again and again," he said.