I am here in Busan for the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2007). I arrived yesterday afternoon and my jaw still hasn't properly aligned itself with my head :)
This place is amazing, the sheer size of it is mind boggling to me. I haven't seen such a scale of population, high rises, office buildings, factories. I am impressed. The population of Busan is 3.5 million, all packed into a relatively small section of land.
I am also a bit intimidated as well because I speak absolutely no Korean... well actually I know one word "kam-sa-ham-ni-da" which means "thank you". The other translation barrier is that the written Korean language does not use a Roman alphabet but instead uses Hangul: 한국어/조선말
This means that I can not even approach a basic comprehension of what things are or how to even pronounce it. It makes it exciting as I don't quite know what I am ordering, but I have found people to be exceedingly friendly, helpful and understanding.
The city is positioning itself as a hub of technology and development, but importantly it seems to be keeping a lively feeling. I can see the rapid pace of change and construction, on the street level everything is being updated or newly build. The view changes from above though, from a higher vantage point I can see behind all the construction fences there are shacks and dwellings hidden from the street level view. As far as I can tell no one lives in these, either they have been re-located into the massive high-rise apartments or they have been pushed into the country. Either way nothing is standing in the way of progress - it looks like the oldest buildings are about 10-15 years old. And even they are being renovated or torn down for a newer, taller building.
Oh, I almost forgot, the activity and hum goes well into the night, well past 4am. I woke up the first night I was here (couldn't sleep well, beds here are HARD), the window was open and I could here people chatting and laughing below. The city is also brighter at night than in the day! It almost requires sunglasses to walk down the busy cramped streets, with neon and glowing signs everywhere. I like it. The best part is that there are no blinking lights. That is a big plus...