Busan halts both Pompidou Centre branch project and La Scala performance

[Financial News] Busan City has halted the project to build a Busan branch of the Pompidou Centre and decided not to proceed as planned with the La Scala Theatre guest performance marking the opening of the Busan Opera House.
Busan Mayor Jeon Jae-soo announced the decision at a press conference at Busan City Hall on the morning of the 14th.
Mayor Jeon said the decision was made after considering together the opinions gathered over the past three months through a review by the Policy Review Group, deliberations by the Cultural Cooperation Committee, public forums and opinion polls. He explained that the key principles of city administration—including how policies affect residents, the public interest, fiscal sustainability and administrative accountability—were used as major criteria in reaching the decision.
The city cited four reasons for halting the project to build the Busan branch of the Pompidou Centre.
First, the city judged that building permanent facilities at Igidae, which holds a geological history stretching back about 80 million years, would exact too great an environmental cost compared with the benefits of the project. It also took into account the difficulty of adequately securing Busan’s rights and the public interest under the contract. Although calls were made to guarantee specifically which works and content would be provided and to improve the contract terms, the city said it would be difficult to meet those demands sufficiently.
The city also explained that although a project-planning study put construction costs funded by the city at about 110 billion won and annual operating costs at about 12.5 billion won, many believed the economic feasibility analysis was not reliable enough. The decision to halt the project was also prompted by insufficient consensus with the local arts community, a lack of plans for mutual growth and an unclear division of roles with existing art museums.
Instead of building the Pompidou branch, the city plans to strengthen the capabilities of the existing East Busan Municipal Art Museum and West Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, and create a complex cultural exhibition space in the North Port area using entirely national funds.
The La Scala guest performance, which received 75% support in an opinion poll of 1,000 residents, was also put on hold due to funding and preparations for the opening. The city said it had planned to raise 40–50% of the total project cost of 10 billion won through corporate donations and sponsorships, but had not secured the targeted funding. It also took into account the lack of plans for local artists’ participation and talent development, as well as the need for sufficient time to prepare for operating the venue.
However, the Busan Opera House is scheduled for completion at the end of this year, followed by trial performances in 2027 and its official opening in 2028. The city plans to prepare an opening festival with local cultural and arts professionals and develop the venue into a leading opera-producing house in Asia through in-house productions, invitations to international works and cultural exchanges. Once the Opera House is operating stably and is on track, the city plans to secure the necessary funding and develop concrete cooperation plans before reconsidering invitations to world-class opera performances, including those by La Scala Theatre.
Mayor Jeon said, “This deliberative process was a way of finding, together with all of you, the direction in which Busan’s culture should move,” adding, “I will also carefully incorporate into future policies the expectations and suggestions of those who are disappointed by today’s conclusion.”

[email protected] Kwon Byeong-seok Reporter