Korean Culture Lesson: Addresses (주소)
Addresses in South Korea can be a bit confusing, especially considering that they just changed the style within the past 10 years. Originally, they didn’t use street names, and roads/neighborhoods were numbered chronologically based on when the buildings on that street were built. But now they’ve started mimicking a more western style which includes street names – which foreigners tend to find very helpful. However, some places haven’t fully taken to the new system yet, so there can be some confusion. Hopefully this post will help explain stuff if you visit/have a pen pal/receive or send packages to or from Korea
When you write an address (주소 in Korean, like 소주 but backwards) out, you go from largest to smallest and then end with the person’s name followed by the zip code. I’ll be showing you how both of these work with the YouTubers WeFancy fanmail address because they so kindly already put it in a video here, and they also showed what both versions of their address look like (go team)
Sample Address (New Version)
경기도 수원시 팔달구 인계로94번길 38-9 505호
The new version is a million times easier for things like food/package delivery, but taxi dudes will still use the old system (mainly because they just need to know the building in general but I’ll talk about that more later)
대한민국 = Republic of Korea (only used when going in/out of Korea, if you stay within Korea, you can leave this out)
There are 6 provinces (sometimes a couple of them are split into north/south but for now, we will stick with 6):
There are also 7 large city areas that are in a province, but not actually a part of it (think like Washington D.C.).
So the metro area (for Seoul, 특별시 meaning Special City and for the rest 광역시 meaning Metropolitan Area/City) would go in the place of the province instead:
If the address isn’t in one of these cities above, the next step after 도 is 시
In the example address, the city is 수원 and when you are writing it for an address you put 수원시 (but like when you’re talking about 수원 in general, leave out the 시)
도 - 시 - 구 - 동 (province - city - county? - neighborhood)
when going largest to smallest, while smaller cities use
도 - 시 - 군 - 읍 - 면 - 리 (province - city - district - town - side? - part??)
If you’re looking at an address where street names are a thing, that’s what goes next after 구!
Street names usually end with one of three words:
대로 = boulevard (usually 8 or more lanes)
There are 3 basic ways of numbering streets (which come directly after/is connected to the street name) and I will do my best to explain them:
Measuring from where that specific road began, the number in the address increases by 2 every 20 meters (odd numbers on the left, evens on the right). So in the example, 94번길, is number 94 road (does that make sense??) Meaning that the address is roughly 940 meters (someone else do the math) away from the beginning of the road.
I’ll steal the example again and say that our street name is called 인계로.The first street to diverge off of it would be called 인계로1길, the second 인계로2길, etc.
The last version is honestly the most confusing thing ever. It’s basically 2nd version plus a letter. They use the alphabet in order (a,b,c… except in Korean its 가, 나, 다…) so that each letter has a number attached to it. So the first road to diverge from the already diverged road of 인계로1길 is 인계로1가길, followed by 인계로1나길, 인계로1다길…
If there is only one number indicated for the building (in our example, there are 2 since there is a hyphen), that means that it’s on a large enough street that the entrance is easily reached. That number also uses the same method as #1 with street names in that if a building’s entrance is 380 meters away from the beginning of a road, it’ll be given the number 38.
If the street is smaller, or if there are just too many buildings in one area, they will share the first big number for the street, but will be given a second smaller number to indicate which building it actually is
The number before 호 indicates the unit number. In our address, it is 505호, but you may also see something like 112동 505호 which could be the equivalent of like apartment building 112, suite 505
***note: all numbers in addresses use sino-korean (일,이, 삼) and the hyphen is pronounced as 대시***
After the building number, you throw in their name and then follow it with the postal code (you honestly rarely need this and it can be tricky to find. there’s apps to help! I think Naver Maps is one)
경기도 수원시 팔달구 인계동 1024-9 505호
(I left out the country, adressee, and zip bc who needs repetition)
What’s different? Well instead of street names, you may notice that we switched to 동 which I mentioned earlier. In lieu of street names, you’ll just keep going down the chain from biggest to smallest for your area in this system.
You may also notice that the building numbers are a smidge (super) different. 1024 is your 번지 (building number), while 9 is another 호, but you usually don’t include it in the written form. The 번지 is basically the building number within the 동 and not just the 길.
This form is a little simpler for your taxi driver as they just need to know the building to get to, but it’s not super specific.
This can be extremely confusing, so as always, I’m open for questions! ✌🏻
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