Busan served as South Korea’s de facto wartime capital during the Korean War. As North Korean forces pushed south in 1950, Busan remained under South Korean control and became the political, military, and logistical center of the shrinking UN-backed defensive zone.
The city stood at the southeastern tip of the Korean Peninsula and anchored the Pusan Perimeter, the last major defensive line held by South Korean and UN forces. Government offices, military headquarters, refugees, supplies, and reinforcements gathered there while much of the rest of South Korea was occupied or contested.
Busan was not formally redesignated as South Korea’s capital; Seoul remained the constitutional capital. “De facto” means that Busan functioned as the seat of government during the emergency. Daegu also remained important and was not captured early in the war, but it did not serve in the same way as the country’s wartime governmental center.