When we first moved to Nakseongdae, I spent some time walking around and learning the street names. Not that there was much point; street names aren't used much in Korea. The traditional system of house addresses is to number all the houses in a neighborhood or "dong" according to the order they were built. Needless to say, it's often impossible to find things.
About a month after we moved here, the names of the bigger streets suddenly changed. (e.g. "Gwandong gil" became "Solbat ro.") They changed not just in our neighborhood, but all around Seoul. Later, I would find out that the street names were changing across the entire country. It took a few weeks for them to get around to changing all the street signs on the little streets, but eventually, our street changed from "Gwandong 5-gil" to "Haengun 4-gil," and our old number plate was switched out in favor of an updated one.
Yesterday, a lady came to our door to explain the new system. On Jan 1 2011, all the addresses in the country are changing from the old time-sequential dong system to the European style sequentially-numbered-along-a-street system.
So... address is no longer Seoul, Gwanak-gu, Bongcheon 6-dong 148-81, but rather Seoul, Gwanak-gu, Haengun 4-gil 55-18 (Bongcheon-dong.) Our address has changed, but we haven't moved...
No comments:
Post a Comment