Anybody who has tried to look for an address in Korea knows that it is difficult. Even reading and speaking Korean is not necessarily an aid, as most people couldn't find Somae-dong 411-2 even if you offered them money. Koreans, when offering directions to their house or office, never do so using street names. They use landmarks, like subway stations, convenience stores, phone boxes, post offices, and so on.

Here's a tip: if ever you are looking for a particular address and you have no landmarks to go by, drop by a police station, real estate agent or fast food delivery restaurant. Why? Because all these places have large wall maps of that particular neighborhood, showing the numbers of all the buildings. Alternatively, if your timing is right and you see a passing post office delivery person, ask them.

But why is the Korean address system so difficult to read? Firstly, some basics. In Western countries the address is written based on the principle of smallest to largest. The addressee's name comes first, followed by the house number, then the street name, suburb or city, and finally the province or state. In Korea, as with Japan and China, it is the opposite. The largest administrative division is mentioned first, then the smaller divisions, until the house number and then finally the addressee's name. Often, Koreans will reverse this order when writing the address in the Latin alphabet, so as to emulate Western addresses.

Here, in descending order of size, are the various administrative areas for cities:
-do :  province
-si : city
-gu : city ward/district
-dong : several dong make up one gu
-beonji : block or land-lot number

In the countryside, other administrative divisions are used such as –gun (county), -eup (village), -myeon and -ri (smaller villages).

Mostly, the divisions themselves are not hard to understand. In cities, every dong and every gu has its own administrative office for things like address registration. It is the land-lot number that seems haphazard. Land-lot numbers were not allocated according to geographic location, but historical order of land allotment/sale/construction. It all goes back to the time when Japan colonized Korea (1910-1945).

To paraphrase from the website of the new Korean address system: "The old address system is based on land-lot numbers given by Japanese colonizers to confiscate anything from land research of the whole Korean Peninsula. Based on the numbers, Japanese colonial authorities imposed taxes under the name of establishing a modern land system after it had annexed Korea."

This is why we might find a house numbered 361 next to house 72, for instance.

Some years ago, the Korean government began to apply street names. Over the last 10 years in all urban areas, street signs have begun to appear, as well as signs on individual buildings showing the street name and a new street number, as in the Western style, with odd numbered buildings on one side of the street, and even-numbered buildings on the other. This was in anticipation of a new law, "The law for indicating the address based on the street names," which came into effect in April 2009.

Over the next few years, the address system will switch over completely from the land-lot system to a street name/number system. The full effects of this change are hard to predict. The key is the tipping point of public awareness and acceptance. When people actually start remembering their own street name and number, and those of the routes they use, it will mean maps will include street names, directions will not have to be based on landmarks, and so on. It also means that all stationery, business cards, registration and identification cards will eventually switch over to the new system too.

For the moment, have a look around the website set up by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security to promote the new website system and help people to find their new address. The English language part of the website, while admittedly not the best example of written English, gives a lot of information about the background of the old and new systems, and how the new system works.

The fun part of the site is the machine that helps you find your new address. It is possible to do it in English but this is quite clunky and the addresses are often too long to read in the space provided, so I recommend that if you can read and type your address in Hangeul, you will go a lot further. In the search function there are four option tabs: new address, land-lot numbers, building/first name, telephone number search. Choose the land-lot system and use the menus to narrow down to your local administrative unit and enter your land-lot number (it may or may not be hyphenated – the boxes allow for this). The map will show the address you have entered, and the new address can be read at the bottom of the search menu.

The map is scrollable and zoomable, and if you zoom right in you can see the new street names and the new house numbers. It's a lot of fun, but it will also prove useful when the new system takes over. (A tip for using the map: click and drag the right mouse button to move/scroll the map. Click and drag the left mouse button up and to the left to zoom out, and click and drag the left button down and to the right to zoom in.)

Astute observers will already notice that KOIS (the parent organization of Korea.net) has been using the new address system, namely 15 Hyoja-ro, Jongno-gu. A "ro" means a road, and "gil" is a narrower street. These are words that you will soon be seeing more of, thanks to the sea change in Korea's addressing system. (You can read more about the old and new address systems over at Wikipedia.)

By Jacco Zwetsloot
Korea.net Staff Writer & Editor