What Busan Does Not Measure

Grey (Kim Hyunseung) · May 28, 2026

Numbers Busan Boasts About

Busan measures many things about itself.

World's 5th largest container port (DNV·Menon 2025). 7th in container throughput (2024 TEU). Busan International Film Festival attendance. Registered foreign residents. Quarterly youth population net outflow. Gross regional domestic product. Comprehensive employment survey. These are the numbers updated annually on the Busan Big Data Portal and Big-DataWave.

The reason these numbers are measured is simple. There are departments responsible for them, an annual obligation to announce them, and they can be compared externally.

Then what does the list of unmeasured areas tell us?

The answer in this article is simple. The list of areas Busan does not measure nearly coincides with the list of areas where Busan has not built trust infrastructure.

What the Maxim Missed

There is an old business maxim: if you can't measure it, you can't manage it, and if you can't manage it, you can't improve it. Often attributed to Peter Drucker, the Drucker Institute confirmed he never said it. The original form comes from management scholar V. F. Ridgway's 1956 paper, and in that paper, Ridgway did not advocate for measurement at all—he warned against its indiscriminate use.

While the maxim survived, that warning was forgotten. So both businesses and cities repeat the same trap. They turn what is measurable into what is important, and what is not measured but more important disappears. They measure quarterly revenue. Customer trust is hard to measure. The list of businesses that lost trust while chasing only revenue is long. They measure container throughput. Citizen trust is hard to measure. Cities walk the same path.

A city's core asset is not measurable numbers. It is the depth of trust flowing among citizens, builders, and visitors. But trust is not directly measured. It only reveals itself through results—who stayed, who returned, who came back.

The maxim must be inverted. Measurement does not create operations. Trust creates operations, and measurement is a tool to track whether that trust is growing. If you don't use the tool as a tool—you mistake an increase in business cards for an increase in trust. But without the tool, you can't even tell whether trust is growing or crumbling.

The List of What Busan Does Not Measure

Looking into the Busan Big Data Portal, what is measured is clear. What is not measured is equally clear.

They measure container throughput. They do not measure the youth ratio in port jobs. Busan is the world's 5th largest port, but whether that port is a workplace trusted by young people is not in the statistics.

They measure Busan International Film Festival attendance. They do not measure the number of filmmakers who decided to reside in Busan after the festival. Attendance is a visit, and residence is a result of trust, yet they do not look at the latter.

They measure foreign tourist numbers. They do not measure foreign stay duration or resettlement rate after one year. Busan knows who came. It does not know who stayed.

They measure outflow of the population in their 20s. According to Busan MBC reports, 4,480 young people left net in the first half of 2025 alone. However, they do not measure the return rate—the proportion of those who left who came back to Busan. Leaving may be about the absence of jobs. Not returning is something else.

They measure the number of tenant companies. Builder density—sole proprietors per capita, coworking spaces, makerspaces, new startup registrations—is scattered across departments and does not come together in one place. There is no indicator that shows at a glance whether the number of people who decided to build something in the city is increasing or decreasing.

They measure settlement revenue after major events. They do not measure price volatility, reservation cancellation rates, or visitor trust index during the event period. When the BTS Busan concert ends, Busan City will announce economic effects worth hundreds of millions of won. It will not announce how much trust Busan lost during those two weeks. Because it has never measured it.

Each line connects to an episode in the series. The diagnoses from Q1 to Q8—why youth leave, how a city with zero top 100 companies works, who Busan can retain—ultimately converge on one fact. The areas Busan does not measure are the areas where Busan has not built trust infrastructure. And because it does not measure, it cannot even see the fact that it has not built.

What Fukuoka Measured Was Not Numbers

In Q6, we looked at Fukuoka's 13 years. But going one level deeper—the real reason Fukuoka was strong was not that it measured numbers. What Fukuoka measured was whether its city was trusted by outsiders. Nomad visa issuances, one-year and two-year retention rates of foreign entrepreneurs—these indicators are not important in themselves. They are important as evidence of the fact that guests stayed rather than left.

One major reason Busan is 13 years behind is that it did not create tools to track whether trust was growing. Trust is invisible, but the results of trust can be measured. Fukuoka has been measuring those results. Busan has not measured even those results.

Four Things Next Busan Should Measure

As Ridgway warned in 1956, measurement is a tool. When the tool becomes the purpose, it is dangerous. The number of business cards is not the depth of trust. But without the tool, you cannot even tell whether trust is growing or crumbling.

What next Busan should begin measuring are four indicators that track whether trust is growing within the city. Regardless of election results, whoever the candidate may be.

1. Stay indicators—did guests trust and stay? Number of foreign and Korean nomads staying in Busan for 30 days or more. Month-long stay registrants, average stay duration of short-term foreign residents. The first indicator to begin distinguishing between visits and stays.

2. Return indicators—did those who left trust again? Among those in their 20s and 30s who left Busan over the past 10 years, the number who registered residence in Busan again. Announced annually. Not only those who left but also those who returned are the city's population.

3. Builder indicators—did builders trust Busan? Quarterly trends of newly registered sole proprietors, corporations, and startup companies in Busan. Number of coworking and makerspaces. An index that shows building activity at a glance.

4. Trust indicators—how were guests treated? Price volatility in accommodation, transportation, and F&B during major events. Reservation cancellation rates. Regular satisfaction surveys of foreigners and out-of-towners. Indicators that track how Busan treated its guests.

None of the four indicators directly measure trust. They measure the results of trust.
That is the real role of measurement.

When you measure, it becomes visible. When it becomes visible, it changes. Next Busan will be created by the things Busan begins to measure, and by the trust that begins to grow beyond that measurement.

Reference: V. F. Ridgway (1956). "Dysfunctional Consequences of Performance Measurements." Administrative Science Quarterly, 1(2), 240–247.