A Steep Way Home

Busan rises where mountains meet the sea. The Korean War brought waves of refugees to the city, first after the war began in 1950 and again after the January 1951 retreat. With little flat land available, many found places to settle on the steep hillsides. Houses gathered along the slopes, and stairways took shape wherever a way between them could be made.

In these neighborhoods, the road often ended below the house. The remaining distance was climbed on foot, along flights of steps and narrow passages fitted to the hillside. Stairways linked homes to roads, and one level of the neighborhood to another. They were part of the everyday work of reaching home in a city built upward under the pressure of displacement.

The stairs remain in use, winding through residential areas formed in the aftermath of war. Their turns and steep rises preserve the shape of a settlement made by necessity, where people carved out routes across difficult ground. Each stairway holds a small part of Busan’s history in the path between the street and home.