Busan Port (Kanpu Ferry Terminal)

Busan Port (釜山港, Korean: 부산항), located in Jung-gu at the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula, served as the most strategically important colonial gateway between Japan and Korea for four decades. The port's modern history began when it was designated as one of Korea's first international treaty ports in 1876, following the Japan-Korea Treaty of Amity (日朝修好条規). A Japanese settlement and trading concession was quickly established, and by the early 1900s, Busan had become a thoroughly colonial port city.

The inauguration of the Kanpu Ferry (関釜連絡船) on September 11, 1905 — connecting Shimonoseki to Busan via an overnight crossing of the Korea Strait — transformed the port into the primary link in an imperial transportation chain stretching from Tokyo through Korea to Manchuria and the Asian continent. Initially operated by Sanyo Kisen shipping company, the route was soon nationalized under the Railway Bureau (later Japanese National Railways). After Japan's formal annexation of Korea in 1910, the ferry became a domestic trunk route, and Busan Port underwent massive expansion: the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th piers, along with the central pier, were constructed between 1912 and 1943 to handle growing passenger, military, and freight traffic.

During the Pacific War, Busan Port's role became increasingly militarized. Troops, war materiel, and supplies flowed through the port in both directions. Most infamously, from 1939 onward — following the enactment of the National Mobilization Act (国家総動員法) — hundreds of thousands of Korean workers were forcibly conscripted and shipped through Busan Port to mines, factories, and construction sites across Japan. The number of Koreans mobilized overseas between 1939 and 1945 runs to several hundred thousand — figures differ by source and by how mobilization is defined — with Busan serving as the primary point of departure. Korean "comfort women" were also transported through the port to military stations throughout the empire.

The Kanpu route suffered devastating losses during the war. On October 5, 1943, the ferry ship Konron Maru (崑崙丸) was torpedoed and sunk by the American submarine USS Wahoo (SS-238) in the Korea Strait, leaving 583 of the 655 passengers and crew dead or missing. Night crossings were subsequently suspended. A supplementary Hakata-Busan route (博釜連絡船) was opened on July 15, 1943 to relieve congestion at Shimonoseki. By June 1945, however, American B-29 bombers of Operation Starvation had laid thousands of mines in the Korea Strait and Kanmon Strait, effectively sealing the passage and shutting down all ferry operations.

Today, the original port area in Jung-gu retains some Japanese colonial-era architectural vestiges, and a modern Kanpu (Kampu) ferry terminal continues to operate international service between Busan and Shimonoseki. The National Memorial Museum of Forced Mobilization under Japanese Occupation (국립일제강제동원역사관), established in Busan in 2015, memorializes the hundreds of thousands of Koreans who departed from Busan Port under forced mobilization. South Korea submitted the "Sites of the Busan Wartime Capital" — encompassing colonial and Korean War-era heritage — to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List.