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Busan Metropolitan City Mobilizes as One Team to Address Population Changes

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Busan Metropolitan City (Mayor Park Heong-joon) announced that it will convene the “3rd Population Change Response Task Force (TF) Meeting” today (June 30) at 2:00 PM in the 7th-floor conference room of City Hall.

The meeting, chaired by the Deputy Mayor for Administrative Affairs, will be attended by relevant bureau directors and representatives from the Busan Research Institute.

This meeting is part of the city's ongoing efforts to address demographic changes, following the “Busan Population Change Response Strategy” established in September last year. It aims to explore policy directions and promote cross-departmental cooperation.

The meeting will focus on several key issues, including:

• ●Policy directions for creating jobs for seniors in a super-aged society

• ●Strategies for utilizing vacant houses and closed daycare centers

• ●Development of a statistical and data system to expand the active population

• ●Findings from the regulatory review to support population change responses

• ●Investment projects funded by the 2026 Local Extinction Response Fund

In particular, the meeting will seek ways to promote continued social participation among older adults and discuss concrete plans to convert vacant houses and closed daycare centers into valuable community assets.

To promote the economic participation of the elderly and support private sector job linkage, the city will strengthen a virtuous employment cycle support system consisting of "job readiness development → job matching → continued employment promotion." Busan also plans to significantly expand the number of social contribution jobs to 2,500 by 2028, leveraging the experience and capabilities of the middle-aged and senior population as societal assets.

Additionally, interdepartmental cooperation strategies will be discussed to utilize vacant houses and closed daycare centers not merely as facilities to manage, but as social assets that can be revitalized.

The city will also present specific improvement plans based on the results of a regulatory review that identified everyday obstacles hindering population inflow and residential conditions.

From April to May this year, Busan carried out a concentrated initiative to identify regulatory issues related to demographic change, uncovering a total of 21 cases (16 under central government jurisdiction and 5 under city jurisdiction). Recommendations for improvement have been submitted to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety for central-level regulations, while internally governed regulations with high public impact will be prioritized for improvement.

Since establishing the Population Change Response TF in October last year, the city has been dismantling silos between departments and comprehensively identifying and managing population-related policies across sectors. The task force will continue to lead the development and implementation of practical policy measures in response to population decline and structural changes.

Deputy Mayor Lee Jun-seung emphasized, “Population issues are not the responsibility of a single department, but a structural challenge that all city departments must address together as one team,” adding, “We will strengthen our cooperation system so that the issues discussed today can be organically linked beyond departmental boundaries, and we will strive to deliver tangible results that citizens can truly feel.”