Korean Apartment Addresses in English: Dong, Ho, Floor, Basement
Updated
Write the unit in front of the English address, for example 101-dong 1203-ho, 345 Songpa-daero, Songpa-gu, Seoul, or 101-1203 when the field is short. Dong is the building in the complex and ho is the unit; # and Apt are not part of the official form.
Your lease or your friend's text says something like 송파대로 345, 101동 1203호, and the shipping form wants "Apartment, suite, unit". The English address on this site stops at the building, because the ministry's English address data has one line per building. The unit part you add yourself, and Korea's road-name address site, juso.go.kr, sets out how.
What do dong and ho mean?
In an apartment complex, dong (동) is the building number and ho (호) is the unit number. So 101동 1203호 is building 101, unit 1203. The Universal Postal Union's sheet for Korea adds a useful detail: the first digit of the ho, or the first two digits when it has four, is the floor. Unit 1203 is on the 12th floor.
Do not confuse this dong with the neighborhood name in an address such as Yeoksam-dong. They are the same Korean word, used for two different things.
Where does the unit go?
English addresses run from the smallest part to the largest, so the unit comes first, followed by a comma and the building address. These are juso.go.kr's own examples:
| Korean | English |
|---|---|
| 달구벌대로323번길 56, 705동 1104호 | 705-dong 1104-ho, 56 Dalgubeol-daero 323beon-gil, Suseong-gu, Daegu |
| (short form) | 705-1104, 56 Dalgubeol-daero 323beon-gil, Suseong-gu, Daegu |
| 퇴계로77번길 42, 3층 | 3-cheung, 42 Toegye-ro 77beon-gil, Chuncheon-si, Gangwon-do |
The short form is allowed, but the UPU sheet says Korea Post prefers 101-dong 103-ho
over 101-103. Use the short form only when a field is too small.
On a form with two address lines, split it the other way round. Line 1 takes the building number,
road and district (345 Songpa-daero, Songpa-gu), line 2 takes only the unit
(101-dong 1203-ho), and the city, province and postal code go in their own fields: City
Seoul, State Seoul, postal code 05698.
Can I write 3F instead of 3-cheung?
Yes. Romanizing dong, cheung (floor) and ho is the rule, but juso.go.kr also allows the English
style where it is widely used: drop the words dong, cheung and ho, write F for floor and B for
basement. So a third-floor office can be 3F, 42 Toegye-ro 77beon-gil, .... Words like
"Apt", "Unit" or "Suite" do not appear in the official rules; they are just form labels.
How do I write a basement unit?
There are two different cases, and mixing them up gives you a different address.
- The whole building is underground. Then B goes before the building number. Gwanghwamun station on line 5 is B172 Sejong-daero, Jongno-gu, Seoul. Only 1,752 of Korea's 6,424,089 addresses are like this (August 2026 data): stations, underground shopping arcades, car parks.
- The unit is below ground in a normal building. A semi-basement (banjiha) flat
in an ordinary villa block is this case. The building number stays as it is, and the B goes on the unit:
지하 101호 becomes
B101-ho(sometimes writtenJiha 101-ho).
The official rules have no separate term for semi-basement. Copy whatever your lease or residence registration shows, and convert it with the rule above.
Why the building number alone is not enough
A whole complex often shares one road address. In the ministry's August 2026 data, 50,725 of 310,274 apartment and multi-unit addresses have two or more buildings registered under the same address. At 345 Songpa-daero (Helio City), 92 buildings share one address and one postal code. Leave out the dong and a courier knows the complex but not the building.
For the other fields on a shipping form, see how to write a Korean address on shipping forms.