How Korean Addresses Work — A Practical Guide
A Korean address such as 152 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06236 follows a logical system. Once you know the parts, you can read, write, and verify any address in South Korea.
The building blocks
| Part | Example | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Building number + road | 152 Teheran-ro | Building 152 on Teheran Road |
| District | Gangnam-gu | "-gu" = district of a large city |
| City / Province | Seoul | Metropolitan cities stand alone; smaller cities add the province (Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do) |
| Postal code | 06236 | 5 digits, introduced in 2015 |
Suffixes tell you what things are
- -daero = major boulevard, -ro = road, -gil = smaller street
- -si = city, -gu = district, -gun = county
- -eup / -myeon = town / township (rural areas — these DO appear in addresses)
- -dong = neighborhood — shown in parentheses for reference, not an official part of road-name addresses
Building numbers encode distance
Numbers are assigned by distance from the road's starting point: one number per 10 meters, odd numbers on the left, even on the right. Building 152 is therefore about 1.5 km along the road, on the right side. A number like 17-3 is a sub-number for buildings sharing an access point, and a B prefix means an underground location.
Korean order is reversed
Written in Korean, the same address runs from large to small: 서울특별시 강남구 테헤란로 152 = Seoul → Gangnam-gu → Teheran-ro → 152. If you paste a Korean address into this site's search box, the matching page shows the English form, the postal code, and the older lot-number (jibun) address side by side.
Two address systems exist
Before 2014, Korea used lot-number ("jibun") addresses like Yeoksam-dong 737, based on land parcels. You will still see them on property documents and older listings. Every building page on this site shows both forms, so you can convert freely between them.
Checking an address
Given any fragment — a road name, a building name, or a romanized address from a booking confirmation — use the search box to find the building page, which shows the verified postal code and official English address from Korean government data, with map links for Google Maps, Kakao Map, and Naver Map.