Busan Just Opened a One-Stop Hub for Its 22,000 International Students

8 min read

Almost every "study in Korea" guide, including most of ours, is quietly written for a Seoul campus. Seoul Global Center, Seoul's own study fairs, a decade of orientation photos from the same welcoming week — it's the default setting. Busan has spent 2026 building something that doesn't fit that default: a single physical address where an international student can open a bank account, get a medical discount, find an internship and register fingerprints for foreign residency, all under one roof.

It's called the Study Busan Hub, and it opened on February 10, 2026.

  • 22,000International students the hub's own opening announcement counted in Busan
  • 30,000Busan's target international student population by 2028
  • 20Colleges plugged into the hub at launch
  • 11Outside institutions — banks, hospitals, the immigration office — that signed on

Five weeks that built one front door

Busan didn't start from zero — the city already runs a support center for international students with the Busan Global City Foundation (BGCF). What's new is that three separate pieces — that existing support center, the city's foreign-resident information portal, and each university's own international office — lined up into a single address within about five weeks in early 2026.

Three steps in early 2026 that built Busan's international-student hub: the city's foreign-resident portal relaunches as My Busan on February 3; the Study Busan Hub itself opens February 10 with 20 participating colleges; and group fingerprint registration for foreign residency begins there on March 20, in partnership with the Busan Immigration Office Portal becomes My Busan Feb 3, 2026 57 languages Study Busan Hub opens Feb 10, 2026 20 colleges, 1 roof Fingerprint registration Mar 20, 2026 With Immigration
Five weeks from portal relaunch to the hub's first group fingerprint session — the newest piece of a front door the city had been building in pieces for years.

The hub sits on the second floor of the National Pension Service's Busan office building in Yeonje-gu, in about 380 square meters run under the Regional Innovation-Centered University Support (RISE) system Korea launched in 2025. Silla University and Dong-Eui Institute of Technology operate it day to day, with the Busan Global City Foundation building the shared platform behind it and 20 colleges feeding students into it. Mayor Park Heong-joon framed the goal plainly at the opening: "The Study Busan Hub will serve as a core engine for Busan as we move beyond 20,000 toward 30,000 international students."

Quick Hop Busan's own numbers aren't perfectly consistent between its headline and its mayor's quoted remarks — the opening announcement's headline cites 22,000 current international students, while the mayor's own quote rounds down to "beyond 20,000." Every version of the story agrees on the target, though: 30,000 by 2028.

What's actually inside

Before the hub, a student's visa question, bank account and job search each ran through whichever office happened to handle that one thing — usually a different desk, sometimes a different building, occasionally a different language. The hub's One-Stop Advisory Zone puts six consultation booths across four categories in one place, staffed by four full-time counselors working in English, Chinese, Vietnamese and Russian (including Uzbek).

The four service categories inside the Study Busan Hub's one-stop advisory zone: finance, where students can open a bank account with a foreign passport; healthcare, covering fee discounts and multilingual care; employment, matching internships and maintaining a job database; and visa and stay support through social integration programs — spread across six consultation booths, a Global Lounge and two classrooms Finance Open an account foreign passport OK Healthcare Fee discounts multilingual care Employment Internship match + job database Visa & stay Social integration programs
Plus a Global Lounge and two classrooms for the Korean-language and culture sessions still rolling out.

Eleven outside institutions signed cooperation agreements to make this work: the Busan Chamber of Commerce & Industry and Busan Enterprises Federation on the employment side, Busan Bank on finance, the Busan Immigration Office on visa and stay status, and Dong-Eui Medical Center and Dong-Eui University on healthcare, among others the city hasn't individually named. A few pieces are still rolling out rather than fully live: joint overseas recruitment fairs, regular TOPIK courses, Korean-language mentoring, cultural immersion programs, student clubs and a mega-regional job fair are all listed as planned additions, not finished features, as of the opening.

Before the hub

Each university ran its own international office — one school's version of visa help, another's version of a bank-account walkthrough, none of it shared or consistent.

Study Busan Hub

One address, 20 participating colleges, and 11 outside institutions — including Busan Bank and the Busan Immigration Office — working from a shared set of agreements.

The fingerprint registration piece, specifically

Five weeks after opening, the hub added something immigration-adjacent: on March 20, 2026, from 12:30 to 5:00 p.m., the Busan Immigration Office ran group fingerprint registration on-site for about 300 new students from Pusan National University, Dong-Eui Institute of Technology and Busan Women's College — part of the standard foreign registration every non-Korean resident aged 17 or older who stays more than 90 days has to complete, normally handled at the airport on arrival or at a local immigration office. A second session followed on March 26 for roughly 200 students at Dong-Eui University. Busan's own announcement calls this the first time the Busan Immigration Office has partnered with a local government to run that registration off-campus, in a non-immigration-office location.

Not every student qualifies yet The March 2026 sessions covered students from four specific schools — the ones closest to the hub's launch partners. If your university isn't one of them, you still register fingerprints the standard way, at the Busan Immigration Office in Jung-gu or at the airport on arrival. Check with your own international office, or call the hub directly, before assuming a group session applies to you.

Mayor Park's framing for why this piece mattered: "Foreign registration and visa services are essential for international students but difficult to handle individually." For a student commuting from Pusan National University or Busan Women's College, both a fair distance from the Jung-gu immigration office, that's the practical difference — one trip to a nearby campus hub instead of a trip downtown during office hours.

If your city isn't Seoul

The city's foreign-resident information portal got its own overhaul the week before the hub opened: Life in Busan, running since 2006, relaunched as My Busan on February 3, 2026, in 57 languages, with a new dedicated "Study in Busan" section covering campus life, local schools and step-by-step procedures — the same information this guide is pulling together, but kept current directly from the source.

Busan's push matters beyond its own city limits. Busan isn't trying to out-Seoul Seoul — Korea's regional specialization visa and other 2026 policy moves are built on the same bet, that a foreign resident settling outside the capital region should get real infrastructure, not an afterthought. A hub like this one is one city actually funding that bet rather than just announcing it.

Soo House — the expat hub connecting foreign residents across Korea to meetups, classes and paid creator campaigns — hears a version of this gap from members outside Seoul more than anyone: the orientation decks, the study-abroad TikTok accounts, even most "study in Korea" explainers assume a Seoul campus by default, which leaves a Busan or Daegu-based member checking three different sources just to confirm their own city has an equivalent. Our own community meetups and classes are open to members regardless of which city they're actually living in — which, practically speaking, is also the fastest way to find out whether your specific school is one of the 20 already plugged into the Study Busan Hub, since that detail isn't easy to check from outside Busan on your own.

Your Next Hop: if you're studying in Busan and haven't been to the hub yet, confirm whether your school is one of the 20 already connected before you assume the one-stop desk applies to you — then check My Busan's new "Study in Busan" section for whatever's rolled out since this was checked. Once you've confirmed what the hub covers, Soo House's own discover and meetup listings are a quick way to find out what's happening near you this week, no matter which city that is.

Where to check

  • mybusan.kr — the city's own foreign-resident portal, including the "Study in Busan" section
  • Study Busan Hub, 2F National Pension Service Building, 1000 Jungang-daero, Yeonje-gu, Busan — or your university's international office, to confirm whether your school is a connected campus
  • Busan Immigration Office — for fingerprint and foreign registration outside a scheduled group session
  • 1577-7716 — the Busan Global City Foundation's international student line (Korean, English, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, Uzbek, Indonesian)

Checked November 2026 directly against Busan Metropolitan City's own English-language press releases: "Study Busan Hub Unveiled Amid 22,000 International Students under City–College Cooperation" (published February 20, 2026, covering the hub's opening, partners, facilities and the mayor's quote), its fingerprint-registration announcement at busan.go.kr/eng/ai-translated-press-releases/1724002 (March 20, 2026 session, student counts, the mayor's second quote), the city's My Busan launch announcement (dated February 9, 2026, covering the February 3 relaunch, 57 languages and the new Study in Busan section), and the Busan International Students Support Center's own page for the existing support center's current operators and contact line — that page does not give an opening date for the center, so none is used here. The general 17-and-over, 90-day fingerprint and foreign-registration requirement, the second March 26 session at Dong-Eui University, and the comparison to similar on-campus mobile services in Seoul and Gwangju are from Korea Herald's coverage. Confirm specifics for your own case with the hub or your international office directly before relying on any date here — Busan's rollout was still adding services as of this guide's last check.

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