How to use
Pick a **시/도 (province)** from the dropdown (17 entries — 9 metropolitan cities and 8 provinces, sorted in standard 행정안전부 order with Seoul at top, Jeju at bottom). Type the **시/군/구** in Hangul (e.g. `강남구`), the **도로명 (road name)** with suffix (`테헤란로`, `세종대로`, `XX길`), the **건물 번호 (building number, e.g. `152`), optional **상세 주소 (apartment / unit / floor)**, and the 5-digit postal code (e.g. `06236`). The tool applies Revised Romanization rules to the Hangul fields, attaches the appropriate English suffix (`-si`, `-gun`, `-gu`, `-daero`, `-ro`, `-gil`, `-dong`, `-eup`, `-myeon`, `-ri`), and prints a Western-ordered address.
Korea ran a major **도로명 주소 reform in 2014**, switching from a parcel-numbered system (지번 주소 — district + parcel number) to a road-name-numbered system (도로명 주소 — road name + building number) that closely mirrors Western conventions. The new system uses building numbers on the road itself, much like "123 Main Street". This tool exclusively handles the new format; for old 지번 주소 you must first convert via the Korea Post lookup site or the doro.go.kr official tool. The output order — `[detail], [building# road], [district], [province] [postal] Korea` — is what international banks, foreign-resident registration offices, and parcel carriers (FedEx, DHL, EMS) expect. The two `-do` provinces (Gyeonggi-do, Jeju-do, etc.) keep the `-do` suffix; all other 시/도 use the bare city/province name.
Examples
Seoul office for international shipment
Input
province: 서울특별시 (Seoul)
district: 강남구 (Gangnam-gu)
road: 테헤란로 (Teheran-ro)
number: 152
detail: 10층 1001호 (10th floor, Suite 1001)
postal: 06236
append: Korea
Output
10th Floor, Suite 1001
152 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu
Seoul 06236
Korea
Gangnam-gu / Teheran-ro is the most-recognized commercial address in Korea — the equivalent of "Manhattan Midtown" for international shipping references. The romanization `Teheran-ro` (테헤란로) honors the road's naming after Tehran, capital of Iran (sister-city ties with Seoul since 1977); the `-ro` (-로) suffix marks it as a primary road, distinct from `-gil` (-길, smaller side roads). On official Korea Post English forms the building number sits *before* the road name (Western convention), even though Korean addresses in Hangul put the number after (`테헤란로 152`).
Gyeonggi-do residential apartment
Input
province: 경기도 (Gyeonggi-do)
district: 성남시 분당구 (Seongnam-si Bundang-gu)
road: 판교로 (Pangyo-ro)
number: 228
detail: 101동 1502호 (Bldg 101, Unit 1502)
postal: 13494
Output
Bldg 101, Unit 1502
228 Pangyo-ro, Bundang-gu
Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do 13494
Korea
Outside the 9 metropolitan cities, Korean addresses include both the city (시) and district (구), separated by a space — `Seongnam-si Bundang-gu`. The `-do` suffix on Gyeonggi is preserved in English because dropping it changes the meaning ("Gyeonggi" alone is ambiguous; "Gyeonggi-do" is unambiguously the province). The same applies to Jeju-do, Gangwon-do, and the four `-buk-do` / `-nam-do` provinces. For apartment buildings, conventions vary: `Bldg 101, Unit 1502` is the international form, while `#101-1502` is a more compact variant accepted by Korea Post but unfamiliar to foreign carriers.
Old 지번 vs new 도로명 — same building
Input
building: Lotte World Tower, Songpa-gu, Seoul
old (지번): 서울특별시 송파구 신천동 29
new (도로명): 서울특별시 송파구 올림픽로 300
Output
old (지번 주소):
29 Sincheon-dong, Songpa-gu
Seoul, Korea
← cannot be entered into this tool, deprecated since 2014
new (도로명 주소):
300 Olympic-ro, Songpa-gu
Seoul 05551, Korea
← format this tool produces
The 2014 reform did not invalidate 지번 addresses — they still exist in legal documents, real-estate registers, and casual conversation ("I live in Sincheon-dong"). But all official forms, government services, and parcel delivery prefer the new 도로명 format. If someone gives you a Korean address with `-dong + number` and no road name, that is the old format; cross-look it up at the **Korea Post English address search** (epost.go.kr/eng) or the official **도로명주소 안내시스템** (juso.go.kr) — both return the new form. Korean GPS apps (KakaoMap, Naver Map) accept either form interchangeably.
FAQ
What romanization standard does this tool use?
The **Revised Romanization of Korean (국어의 로마자 표기법, RR)** issued by the Ministry of Culture in **2000** and amended in 2014. RR is the official standard used on road signs, passports issued since 2014, government documents, and Korea Post English-language forms. Key features: silent consonants are dropped (서울 → "Seoul", not "Seo-ul"), `ㅓ` is written as `eo` (not `ǒ`), `ㅡ` is written as `eu` (not `ŭ`), and aspirated/tensed distinctions are mostly suppressed in initial position. The older **McCune-Reischauer (MR)** system, used in academic linguistics and pre-2000 South Korean documents, uses diacritics (`ǒ`, `ŭ`, `ǔ`) and aspiration apostrophes (`p'`, `t'`, `k'`) that are unfriendly to plain-ASCII transmission. Both systems coexist: passports use RR, library cataloging often uses MR, and personal names follow personal preference. For postal use, always use RR.
Why do my personal name and address use different romanization styles?
Korean **personal names** follow individual preference and historical convention, not the RR standard. Common surnames have multiple romanizations in active use: 김 can be "Kim" (most common, ~90%), "Gim" (RR-strict), "Ghim", or "Kym". 이 can be "Lee" (~90%), "Yi", or "Rhee" (older Hanja-derived). The Ministry of Foreign Affairs allows passport applicants to pick their preferred spelling, which then becomes legally binding for that person. **Place names**, in contrast, are standardized — Korea Post and signage authorities use RR uniformly. The result is that a typical Korean letter might be addressed to "Mr. Lee Min-ho, 152 Teheran-ro" where "Lee" violates RR (which would be "I") but "Teheran-ro" follows it. This is intentional: name continuity matters for legal identity, while address consistency matters for delivery.
When did Korea switch from 지번 to 도로명 addresses?
The legal switch happened on **2014-01-01**. The Ministry of Government Administration started the road-name-assignment project in 2007 and ran a multi-year pilot during which both systems were valid; from 2014 onward, official government services, real-estate registration, and most commercial systems use the new 도로명 format exclusively. The old 지번 system is not abolished — it still appears in real-estate cadastre records and legal contracts where historical continuity matters — but new construction, signage, parcel delivery, and Korean GPS apps default to 도로명. The transition was modeled partly on Japan's post-war street-numbering reforms (which never fully succeeded) and partly on the US/European numbered-street convention. Most Koreans under 40 instinctively use 도로명, while older Koreans often still recite 지번 from memory for places they've known for decades.
What is the 5-digit postal code system and is the dash optional?
Korea switched from a **6-digit postal code with mid-dash** (`123-456`) to a **5-digit postal code without dash** (`12345`) on **2015-08-01**. The new codes were redesigned around the 도로명 system: the first digit identifies a province, the next two narrow to a city/district, and the last two indicate a delivery-zone within that district. Old 6-digit codes still appear on older business cards and old envelopes but are no longer used by Korea Post — submitting a 6-digit code to a delivery system routes to "unknown postal code" and the address is processed only by the human address text. Always use the new 5-digit form. If you only know the old code, look up the address on epost.go.kr/eng — both Korean and English search return the current 5-digit code along with the road-name address.
How do I write a Korean address on an international parcel from outside Korea?
On the parcel, write the address in **English using the format this tool produces**, with `KOREA` (or `SOUTH KOREA`) in **CAPS on the bottom line**. International postal sorting at the origin country uses only the bottom-line country to route to Korea Post; from there, Korean carriers can read either Hangul or English. As a courtesy, also include the **Hangul form** on the parcel (handwritten or printed) next to the English version — Korean delivery couriers will use the Hangul when both are available, which reduces errors with hard-to-romanize district names. International tracking systems (USPS, Royal Mail, Japan Post) accept the address in any reasonable format; what they cannot accept is a missing country line. Phone number on the recipient line is encouraged because Korean couriers routinely call ahead for apartment buildings.
How does Korea's system compare to Japan's 47 prefectures?
The two systems are surface-similar but operationally opposite. Korea has **17 first-level divisions** (9 metropolitan cities + 8 provinces) and uses a **Western-ordered road-name + building-number** system since 2014. Japan has **47 first-level divisions** (都道府県) and uses a **Japanese-ordered chome-banchi-go** system rooted in lot-creation chronology rather than streets. Korean addresses are *fully convertible* to Western order with minimal kana-style ambiguity because Hangul phonetics map cleanly to Latin letters; Japanese addresses require kana input to romanize and never neatly fit Western street-numbering. Korean postal codes are 5 digits; Japanese are 7. For both, the country line goes at the bottom of an international parcel. If you handle East Asian addresses regularly, our sister tool **`address-en-jp`** covers the Japanese case.
Related concepts
Korean **Revised Romanization (RR)** belongs to a family of phonetic-rather-than-phonemic transliteration systems designed to make a non-Latin script readable for English speakers without requiring a pronunciation guide. Its sister standards include **Hepburn** for Japanese (used by `address-en-jp`), **Hanyu Pinyin** for Mandarin Chinese (introduced 1958, now ISO 7098), **Vietnamese chữ Quốc ngữ** (a Latin-alphabet writing of Vietnamese created by Portuguese Jesuits in the 1620s and later refined by Alexandre de Rhodes). RR's design choices reflect a 1990s consensus that English-speaking users find diacritics painful; the trade-off is that some Korean phonemic distinctions (aspirated vs unaspirated) are lost in romanization, which makes the inverse mapping (Romaja → Hangul) ambiguous. This is why Korean software does not generally include Romaja-to-Hangul automation — it cannot be done reliably.
The **도로명 주소 reform** completed in 2014 is one of the largest national addressing reforms of the 21st century. Comparable efforts: **Japan** has attempted similar reforms since the 1960s with limited success — the chome-banchi-go system remains primarily lot-numbered rather than road-numbered. **Saudi Arabia** rolled out a Western-style addressing system in 2016 mostly because international shipping companies refused parcels without street addresses. **United Kingdom** kept its medieval-derived "house name + street name" system but added postal codes in 1959 to disambiguate. **United States** has used street-numbered systems since the late 1800s but is fragmented across 50 state-level addressing conventions. Korea's reform stands out for the speed of adoption (legally complete in 7 years from start to mandate) and the high uptake (~95% by 2020 in surveys); both factors are credited to the small country size and high digital infrastructure.
Four adjacent **legal and operational** concerns intersect with Korean addresses. The **국민건강보험 (National Health Insurance) and 국민연금 (National Pension)** systems pull address from the resident registration database; an address change requires formal notification via 정부24 (online) or a 동주민센터 (district office). The **외국인등록증 (Foreign Resident Card)** must be updated within 14 days of an address change for non-citizens. Korean **e-commerce delivery** is heavily optimized around 무인택배함 (unattended parcel lockers — present at most apartment lobbies) and same-day or next-day delivery, neither of which works without a complete 도로명 + apartment number + phone combination. Finally, the **사업자등록증 (Business Registration Certificate)** ties a Korean business to a legal address (소재지) — moving the registered office requires filing with the local tax office. For an outside reader, these touchpoints make Korean addresses tightly integrated with national-ID and commerce systems in a way more reminiscent of Singaporean or Estonian e-government than of US driver-license-style independent verification.
