Busan Tower

This guide to Busan Tower traces the layered history of Yongdusan, the hilltop Koreans once called the dragon's head, believed to guard the city from invaders by sea. You'll hear how Japanese settlers built a Shinto shrine on its sacred crown in the early 1900s, and how that shrine burned when colonial rule ended in 1945, leaving the hill scarred for decades. It follows the 1973 decision to crown the site instead with a design borrowed from a centuries-old Buddhist reliquary at Gyeongju's Bulguksa temple. Look up at the tower's tiered, lacy crown and consider whose claim to this summit it answers.