Honestly, we don’t have a nicer way to say this. We LOVE Hangul addresses but the Romanized Korean addresses sucks and makes life harder in many situations. In order to truly navigate Korea, you need the Korean address written in Hangul. We know that’s frustrating but it’s the truth and the struggle isn’t talked about online enough. So, let’s talk about it.
What is Romanized Korean?
Romanization is a linguistic term that refers to taking one language and converting it to Latin letters. In this case, when Korean is written out in “English” so that English speakers can try to pronounce the words without knowing how to read Hangul. It feels good to see but it doesn’t work very well for actually finding places.
A Romanized Korean address looks like this: 29 Itaewon-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul
As a non-Korean speaker, you will flock to addresses like this like a moth to a flame and just like that moth, you may get burned. South of Seoul wants to provide a little extra info so the burn doesn’t have to burn too deep and ruin your love of living or traveling in South Korea.
What is Hangul?
Hangul is the Korean writing system. You want to have addresses written in Hangul and not Romanized Hangul (Korean). We call it Romanized Korean since non-Korean speakers may conflate the entire Korean language with the Hangul writing system when searching for help in Google.
A Hangul Korean address looks like this: 서울특별시 용산구 이태원로 29
You may not be comfortable with Hangul addresses that look like this because they don’t mean anything to you. That’s understandable. However, to comfortably live in Korea you may want to tackle that fear and overcome it.
Why do Romanized Korean Address Suck?
Keep in mind we aren’t saying the concept of Romanizing sucks, or that Korea sucks, or that anything about this situation reflects poorly on anyone in any way. Korea goes out of its way to make the country accessible to English speakers. It’s not Korea’s fault that such a situation exists and no one should be mad at anyone about it.
The fact that different cultures and different languages exist makes life more fun and dynamic. Learning to navigate such complicated situations challenges our brains and helps us develop empathy for immigrants in our own countries and others struggling to learn new languages.
What we are saying is that the solutions used to convey information between different languages may come with complications that don’t feel good at first. Understanding such language complications may empower you to advocate for your own best interests. The first step to overcoming anything that ‘sucks’ is knowing what moving parts you need to manage.
Such language complications occur because society contains many moving parts. These moving parts include the computerized or organic databases that run apps, GPS systems, and the human brain. And these databases (even our brains database) struggle to correlate Romanized Hangul and Hangul. There are three big reasons that Romanized Korean addresses suck and might be useless when living or traveling in South Korea:
- Romanized Korean addresses usually can not be used in Foreign or Korean-designed app maps. That’s right, even though you see the address in front of you if you put that Romanized Korean address into a Navigation app it won’t be found. To understand the problem, imagine how effective would be to put a Koreanized US address into Google. It wouldn’t help you at all.
- Romanized Korean addresses do not work for taxi drivers. Taxi drivers can neither read Romanized Korean nor use it to find the intended destination in a Navigation tool. Taxis need the address provided in Korean in order to put it into their GPS. To understand the problem, imagine how effective it would be to show a cab driver in a small town in Europe or the US a local address converted to Chinese or Korean?
- Romanized Korean addresses do not work for those helping you on the street. Very few people can figure out how what a Romanized-Korean address actually means quickly. It’s a huge struggle.
- Romanized Korean addresses don’t help your friends. Let’s say you copy a romanized Korean Address from Google Maps and send it to your friend. That same address may not work in Naver Maps or Kakao Maps. Additionally, the Romanized Korean from Naver Maps may not work in Kakao Maps or Google Maps. That information you sent doesn’t help your friend find the location they want to go to.
- Romanized Korean addresses often flip the order from Hangul Korean addresses. Korea organizes its addresses from biggest to smallest. Example: Country, state, city, neighborhood, street, house. Romanized Korean addresses not only change the address to different letters but also flips the order. Notice how the English version starts with 29 and the Korean version ends in 29 in this example: 29 Itaewon-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul / 서울특별시 용산구 이태원로 29
Obviously, there may be times when Romanized Korean addresses word out fine for you but there will be some very critical times when things go south and you feel horribly helpless.
Solutions for Finding the Hangul Address
When you find yourself betrayed by a Romanized Korean address try one of the following tricks:
- Find the business in Naver Maps using the business phone number or give the business phone number to the taxi driver. South of Seoul has a whole blog about using phone numbers instead of addresses.
- Message 1330 with the information you have available. Maybe it’s an English or Romanized-Korean name for the location and a Romanized-Korean address. The 1330 operator can find the location in Naver or Kakao and send you the accurate pin. South of Seoul has a whole blog introducing how 1330 works.
- Put the Romanized Korean address into the English section of the Papago translator. Sometimes Papago can accurately convert the address back into Korean. Keep in mind, that this trick doesn’t have 100% accuracy but you can try it. We do this sometimes but we can read the Korean address to see if the translation was accurate. Use this tip with caution.
- South of Seoul app and Google Maps offer both Romanized and Hangul addresses. Always copy and use the Hangul version for Kakap Maps and Naver Maps.
- Ask your hotel’s front desk for help. Korean customer service and front-line workers tend to be very helpful. Don’t be afraid to ask for a Korean address or additional help finding reliable information.
If you always stay vigilant in confirming addresses and knowing that Romanized Korean addresses may cause a problem, your time living in traveling in Seoul will be filled with far fewer hurdles and strains.
Choosing a Navigation App
Choosing the right Navigation app will also help with your time in South Korea. Read this article next to know which navigation apps work best and why!
Using Phone Numbers Instead of Address
We talked about this in the above post, learn more about how to use phone numbers instead of addresses in our post about a navigation app hack.
Using Naver Maps for Navigation
Want to know how to use Naver Maps, get started with Navigating Korea: Using Naver Maps post.
Creating Custom Travel Plans with Naver Maps
Want to take your Naver Maps skills to the next level? Checkout our post on how to creat a custom travel itinerary in Korea.
Volunteer with South of Seoul
Interested in working with a fun team of talented volunteers? The South of Seoul volunteer team is always looking for other like-minded folks to research information, compile blogs, and edit content.
Founded in 2015, the South of Seoul team consists of volunteers on three continents working together to support English-speaking people traveling or living in South Korea. South of Seoul volunteers work with organizations and individuals across South Korea to improve equitable access to information across South Korea. Much of South of Seoul’s information focuses on Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea.
Blogs published under the authorship of “South of Seoul” include blogs compiled by multiple volunteers to improve access to standardized information unrelated to individualized personal experiences.
