Nam-gu has large-scaled cultural facilities including six universities/colleges, Busan Cultural Center, Busan Municipal Museum and a district library. Compared with other districts, Nam-gu also has sufficient and diverse cultural tourism resources such as UN Memorial Cemetery, which is the only UN cemetery in the world, beautiful Oryukdo-islands, which are the symbol of Busan City, Igidae, Sinseondae, Baekunpo, as well as Dongmyeong Temple where traditional beauty is harmonized with modern beauty.

This district is in the spotlight as a new-millennium sacred ground for Busan culture, and an advance base for Busan tourism. Thus, it has huge potential depending on the direction of developments. Major cultural festivals include Oryukdo Festival and Dalmaji Festival (Full-moon Festival) managed by Gu, and Oryukdo Cultural Festival managed by Office of Education. Especially, Oryukdo Festival takes its place as an international festival where warriors participated in the Korean War and their families participated.

Oryukdo Festival
This cultural festival, developed from existing Nam-gu Cultural Art Festival, is the sixth this year (in total, 11th), and is held in UN Memorial Cemetery and Busan Cultural Center area. This general cultural art festival is supported by the Presidential Commission for the New Millennium, Korea National Tourism Organization and local press. It is sponsored by Busan Nam-gu Office, and managed by Busan Oryukdo UN Festival Organizing Committee. Around UN Day (Oct. 24), this festival is held for four to five days. It is held with diverse events such as a memorial ceremony, lighting of the sacred torch, mass traditional wedding of citizens in Nam-gu, an opening ceremony, Oryukdo family song contest, folk match, youth dance contest, students’ oratorical contest, exhibition, musical concert and other performances.

Jeongwol Daeboreum Dalmaji Festival(First Full Moon in a Lunar Year Festival)
cultural festival was firstly held in order to commemorate dinosaur footprints found on rocks in Igidae Coast in Oct, 1999. This festival is held on the 15th day of the fist month (lunar), consisting of surveying dinosaur footprints, sticking wishing paper, reading the optative sentence, Daljip Taeugi (meaning “Burning the Moon’s Old House”), the Korean circle dance, celebration performance, fireworks, dinosaur model display and panel.

The cultural art groups in Nam-gu act very vigorously, based on schools, and are diversely organized through a variety of genres. However, their entity gets hardly recognized due to the abolition of performer registration. Currently, those groups acting in Nam-gu belong to Nam-gu Cultural Art Association, including Musician Association, Artist Association, Performer Association, Folk Association, Calligrapher Association, Photographer Association, Florist Association and Oratory Association. Symphony Orchestra, Drama Groups, Ballet Dancers, Korean Classical Orchestra, Choral Groups and Boy and Girl Choral Groups are included in Municipal Art Performing Organizations under Busan Cultural Center

For local broadcasting, there are five cable broadcasting companies including Dongnam Cable Vision, Jungang, Taeyang, Boseong, Dongyang and Hyundai; for local district newspaper, there is Busan Nam-gu Newspaper monthly published by Gu District

For the professional cultural art training center, there is Busan Art College founded in March 1994. This two-year college provides Dept. of Literary Art Creative Writing, Dept. of Theater and Film, Dept. of Dance and Dept of Industrial Design. Furthermore, there is College of Art in Gyeongseong University, providing Dept. of Music, Dept. of Art, Dept. of Theater and Dept. of Dance, cultivating professional artists.

There are Ubong Literature Prize and Juhong Lee Children’s Literature Prize awarded to Busan literary figures. Annual public subscription is operated by Gu Office, and has been provided in the field of paintings, calligraphy and photography since 1995. In general, however, awarding systems are somewhat poor.

Most famous artists connected to Nam-gu, the cultural district, work for Municipal Art Performing Organizations or teach in university/college. Below are those famous artists nationwide.

 Namju Kang Poetry, Publishing collections of poems and literary criticism. President of Bugyeong University
 Sangnam Kim Literature for Children, ‘Cold Caught since Spring’, ‘Hill Child and Car’, Vice-president of Busan Literature Association
 Hoseok Yu Musician (Conductor), Dean of College of Music, Shilla University
 Seung Gwak Musician (Conductor), Conductor of Busan Symphony Orchestra

Numerous poets’ work including ‘Oryukdo’ by Eunsang Lee introduce Nam-gu. Especially, Oryukdo-islands, located at the gateway of Busan and known as a symbol of Busan, is beautiful and mystic enough to be a material for art. These attracting islands frequently appear not only in poems, but also in pictures and photographs. “Five islands in Oryukdo; when looking them again, six islands appear / Under the cloudy sky, one or two islands make five or six islands / Confused the number in a cloudy and a shiny day / Looking at them while drunken, ten becomes twenty / Only empty sea in a densely foggy day / Today, completely confused in rains / Probably, a poet counted those islands again and again in old days / Hiding the pointing hand, and named them Oryukdo / I will return and convey the name as he did” - from Oryukdo by Eunsang Lee (pen name: Nosan) -

Besides, Mt. Hwangryeong, Igidae and Sinseondae have been dealt in works, but those fames are somewhat lower than that of Oryukdo.