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Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on May 10, 2011 at 8:22am

Thanks for the reminder, Stephane. For some reason, I feel a little sad to lose the old system (which actually will continue for real estate sales) but it's also nice to now live on Hwarang Road, which is kind of a cool name.

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Permalink Reply by Lara Tosh on May 11, 2011 at 8:19am

I prefer the old system, too ...I find it to be one of the more interesting / cool aspects of life here:  it's more "natural" ...more "organic (or at least that's how I perceive it) ^.~

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Permalink Reply by stephanemot on May 11, 2011 at 9:56am

I'll miss the "dong" flavor. in certain places, the whole neighborhood concept is threatened.

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Permalink Reply by Lara Tosh on May 11, 2011 at 5:40pm

I agree ...and how are they possibly going to name all of the many streets / alleyways?  It's an ENORMOUS endeavor -and it seems that taxpayers' money might be better spent on, say, education or social welfare.

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Permalink Reply by stephanemot on May 11, 2011 at 8:23pm

Change will cost, but also save a lot of money and time.

It's a constructal model : you usually have a main avenue (Blablahro), all streets leading to it renamed Blablahro-1-gil, Blablahro-3-gil, Blablahro-5-gil... on one side, 2-gil, 4-gil, 6-gil... on the other, and the next level can look like Blablahro-1-ga-gil, Blablahro-1-na-gil, Blablahro-1-da-gil, Blablahro-1-ra-gil... But it's not that simple (!) either...

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Lara Tosh on May 12, 2011 at 5:30am

I see ...let's hope it actually does save money & time ^.~

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Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on May 18, 2011 at 8:39pm

You know, I was sad to see the old 호적등본 system get replaced a few years ago by the various family relationship certificates, but now, who the heck cares? I'm sure we'll get over our nostalgia for the old address system too.

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Permalink Reply by Erik Cornelius on May 19, 2011 at 7:24pm

I have a much better sense of where things are based on dong than on street name. Some of the streets in Seoul, especially in Gangnam, are really long. How many individual addresses are going to end up being on Tehran-no, I wonder?

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Permalink Reply by stephanemot on May 18, 2011 at 8:32pm

The old system shall be tolerated two more years (new system to be implemented as scheduled on Jan 1st 2012) :

http://seoulvillage.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-address-system-in-kore...

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Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on May 19, 2011 at 2:37pm

The story behind the two-year address extension is a bit interesting and rooted somewhat in the situation that arose from the new traffic light system they tried to introduce and failed.

I don't really understand why the public went crazy with the new three-light streetlights they put on several intersections in central Seoul. They were, after all, test-driving the new system to get feedback and improve. But at least one newspaper (the 중앙일보, which I read) went ballistic, blaming the government daily on ram-rodding a new policy through without proper research and public notification. Just a few days ago, the government put the new street light plan on indefinite hold and took down the test-drive lights.

The lesson that's been taken away from that is that no matter how good the idea, the government can't just impose changes without adequate communication with the public and so this two-year extension on the addresses appears to be the result of having learned the lesson with the streetlights.

BTW, here's what our address change mail notification looks like. Kind of cool that they even explained the rationale behind the name of our street. I also like how it's addressed to my son, the youngest member of our family and head of household, since he's a Korean and I'm not; and he's male and his mom and sister aren't... Quaint...:-)

 

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Permalink Reply by Lara Tosh on May 22, 2011 at 8:47am

We found a similar notice taped to our door last night when we got home.

Like Eric, I also find the old system more meaningful.  It fits how things are laid out better (perhaps I'm simply one of those people for whom it works & so my thinking is: "why change it?").

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Permalink Reply by Wally Nes on May 19, 2011 at 2:29pm

We're ready for it!

 

Our relations in different countries are mightily confused which to send their correspondence to though.

I look forward to the new system for navigation purposes. But I can find my way well enough as is so it's not a must-change situation for me.

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