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Busan Metropolitan City Launches “Year-End and New Year Crowd Safety Special Measures Period”

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Busan Metropolitan City (Mayor Park Heong-joon) announced that it will operate the “Year-End and New Year Crowd Safety Special Measures Period” through January 4, 2026, as approximately 400,000 people are expected to gather across the city for festivals and events during the year-end and New Year season.

During the special measures period, the City plans to intensively manage 29 locations, focusing particularly on Seomyeon Youth Street and Gwangalli Beach, where crowds are expected to concentrate for major events such as Christmas, bell-ringing ceremonies, and sunrise/New Year celebrations.

[Pre-inspections]
First, to prevent crowd-related safety accidents during the year-end and New Year season, the City will conduct pre-inspections of 29 locations where major year-end and New Year events will be held. Among them, 24 large-scale and high-risk areas will be jointly inspected by the City and the district/county governments, while the remaining areas will be comprehensively checked independently by the responsible district/county governments.

The pre-inspections will be carried out sequentially according to each district/county’s schedule. The City plans to secure sufficient time before the events to identify risk factors in advance and ensure that practical measures are implemented.

In particular, the City will focus on inspecting safety vulnerabilities at locations with a high risk of accidents—such as guardrails on coastal breakwaters and steep slopes near mountain peaks where falls may occur—and will prepare for citizens to spend the year-end and New Year season in a safer environment through improvements and supplementary measures tailored to on-site conditions.

[On-site Situation Management]
The City will also designate December 24–25 and December 31–January 1 as “intensive management periods” and conduct intensive on-site situation management in the Seomyeon Youth Street area and at Gwangalli Beach, together with relevant agencies including the City, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, Busanjin-gu and Suyeong-gu, the police, and the fire department.

On-site situation management will begin at 6:00 p.m. on each day, with focused inspections by time slot on crowd density and pedestrian safety. The end time will be decided flexibly through joint situation assessment meetings of the relevant agencies.

In addition, to ensure efficient on-site situation management, the City plans to install on-site situation rooms—at a booth next to the Busanjin-gu Central Police Substation (near Bujeon Library) and at the Suyeong-gu Gwangalli Community Culture Center—and to do its utmost to prevent safety accidents.

[Safety Publicity and Guidance Activities]
On the day before Christmas (December 24) and on New Year’s Day (January 1), the City will conduct campaigns to prevent crowd safety accidents.

The campaigns will be carried out at Seomyeon Youth Street and Gwangalli Beach, including ▲banner publicity and ▲street marches while wearing sashes.

Meanwhile, the City distributed the “Standard Safety Management Plan of Busan Metropolitan City” in September to manage even recurring events without an organizer under unified standards, and it has reinforced procedures for establishing and reviewing safety management plans, thereby strengthening the overall crowd safety management system compared with last year to ensure thorough safety management.

Through the “Standard Safety Management Plan of Busan Metropolitan City,” the City presented integrated standards that address limitations in safety management plans that had been mixed and inconsistent by event type—such as festivals, events, sports activities, and performances—or depending on whether the organizer was public or private.

In addition, the City strengthened operational procedures so that safety management plans established in accordance with the standard plan are completed through committee review, ensuring that they lead to effective safety management in practice.

Kim Gi-hwan, Director General of the City’s Citizen Safety Office, stated, “During this special measures period, the City will work closely with relevant agencies and concentrate all its capabilities on preventing safety accidents, creating a year-end and New Year season that citizens can enjoy with peace of mind.” He added, “As the City places citizen safety as its top priority, we ask for your active cooperation in the operation of this special measures period.”