Dalmaji-gil

This guide to Dalmaji-gil in Busan opens with a puzzle: why does the green hillside beside this postcard road, nicknamed Busan's Montmartre for its cafes and galleries, look patchy and unfinished. It traces the answer back to 2002, when the city drew a line on a map and declared the slope toward the fishing village of Cheongsapo protected parkland, then let two decades pass without buying out the landowners still living inside its boundary, while illegal vegetable plots and shacks crept in. Locals have a name for the legal clock ticking underneath that story: the park sunset.