# Korea Address Standard

## Overview

Korea replaced its address system. Until 2014 an address located a building by the number of the land parcel it stood on; since then it locates it by a road name and a building number. Both systems are still present in business master data, they use different numbers for the same building, and neither can be converted into the other by rule.

This article describes the Korean address format, how CDQ represents it in the CDQ address model, and which reference data CDQ maintains for Korea. It is the reference for anyone mapping Korean business partner data into CDQ, or consuming curated Korean addresses from CDQ. It covers the Republic of Korea.

**In this article, you will understand:**

- How a Korean address is structured, and how the road name system differs from the lot number system it replaced
- How each Korean level maps to a concept in the CDQ address model, and which SAP field it reaches
- Why a Korean address is identified as a whole rather than parsed field by field
- Which reference data CDQ maintains for Korea, and what the published values look like
- Where the current CDQ coverage for Korea is incomplete


Available in:

* [CDQ Wiki: business partner metadata for Korea](https://meta.cdq.com/DataModel:CDQ/Business_Partner/Address/Country/KR): browse the published Korean metadata


## How a Korean address is built

A Korean address is a road and a number under a nest of places, which is not an unusual shape. What is specific to Korea is that the country changed the system, and both are still in use.

| Specific to Korea | Why it matters |
|  --- | --- |
| Two addressing systems are in circulation for the same building | a road name address and a lot number address look alike and are not interchangeable, and neither converts into the other by rule |
| The road name carries the size of the road | 대로, 로 and 길 are part of the name and tell you what kind of road it is |
| The building number is derived from position along the road | it is meaningful only with the road name, and unrelated to the lot number of the same building |
| The address is written largest first, and reversed when romanised | position is not a reliable way to tell which level a value belongs to |
| Every level from the province down is used to address mail | unlike Germany, France or Portugal, no Korean level is administrative-only |


### The levels

All five are used to address mail.

| Level | Korean | Romanised | What it is | Example |
|  --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | 시 / 도 | si / do | province level: special city, metropolitan city, province, special self-governing city or province | 서울특별시 (Seoul) |
| 2 | 시 / 군 / 구 | si / gun / gu | city, county, or autonomous district of a metropolitan city | 중구 (Jung-gu) |
| 3 | 읍 / 면 / 동 | eup / myeon / dong | town, township, or neighbourhood | 태평로1가 (Taepyeongno 1-ga) |
| 4 | 도로명 | road name | the road, ending in 대로, 로 or 길 | 세종대로 (Sejong-daero) |
| 5 | 건물번호 | building number | the number on that road | 110 |


Under the road name system the neighbourhood at level 3 is replaced by the road name, so an urban Korean address commonly has four of these five levels rather than all five.

A complete address, largest first as written in Korean, with the post code first:

```
04524
서울특별시 중구 세종대로 110
```

Written in English the order is reversed: `110 Sejong-daero, Jung-gu, Seoul 04524`.

### The road name carries its own size

A Korean road name ends in one of three words, and the word tells you what kind of road it is:

| Korean | Romanised | What it is |
|  --- | --- | --- |
| 대로 | -daero | a major boulevard, eight lanes or more |
| 로 | -ro | a road, two to seven lanes |
| 길 | -gil | a smaller street branching off a road |


In romanised form the word is joined to the name with a hyphen: `Sejong-daero`, `Teheran-ro`, `Bukchon-gil`. The hyphen and the word are part of the name, not punctuation to be cleaned away.

### The building number is derived from position

Under the road name system, building numbers are assigned by distance along the road, odd on one side and even on the other, ascending from west to east and from south to north. Two consequences follow: the number is meaningful only together with the road name, and a building number from the road name system has no relationship to the lot number that identified the same building before 2014.

### The two systems

| System | Korean | Locates a building by | Status |
|  --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Road name address | 도로명주소 | road name and building number | the legal address since 2014 |
| Lot number address | 지번주소 | neighbourhood and land parcel number | superseded, still common in business data and still how many people give directions |


The same building has both. `서울특별시 중구 세종대로 110` and `서울특별시 중구 태평로1가 31` are the same place. There is no rule that turns one into the other; it requires the national address database.

A lot number is not a building number
Both are a small integer following a place name, and both sit in what a western model calls the house number. Treating them as the same value merges two different addresses or splits one, depending on which way it goes. The reliable signal is the level above: a road name ending in 로, 길 or 대로 introduces a building number, and a neighbourhood ending in 동 or 가 introduces a lot number.

### Properties that regularly cause integration errors

**동 means two different things.** As a level in an address it is a neighbourhood. Inside an apartment complex it is a building block: `101동 1502호` is building 101, unit 1502. The same character, one level of the address apart.

**Apartment complexes carry two numbers below the address.** 동 for the block and 호 for the unit. Both are premises, and they are frequently the only thing that distinguishes two business partners at the same address.

**Post codes changed in 2015.** The current post code is five digits. The previous one was six, written as three digits, a hyphen and three digits. A Korean record that has not been touched since 2015 carries the old form.

**Romanisation is not stable across decades.** The official system changed in 2000, and the earlier spellings survive in company names and legacy records: Pusan for Busan, Taegu for Daegu, Kwangju for Gwangju, Inchon for Incheon, Cheju for Jeju.

**The province suffix is part of the name.** 서울특별시 is Seoul the special city and 경기도 is Gyeonggi the province. The suffix says which kind of unit it is, and the bare form is a different string.

**Two provinces were renamed after 2022.** Gangwon became 강원특별자치도 (Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province) in June 2023, and North Jeolla became 전북특별자치도 (Jeonbuk State) in January 2024. ISO 3166-2 kept the codes `KR-42` and `KR-45`; only the names and, for Gangwon, the category changed. Master data therefore carries the old and the new name for the same province, and a record is not wrong for using either.

**A level word can sit in the road line.** An address string may carry the province, city or county word (-do, -si, -gun, -gu) or the town word (-eup, -myeon) inside the road text, and a lot number address keeps its 동 or 리 beside the lot number. The word tells the level; where it sits does not.

**The floor is its own element.** 층 (floor) follows the building and precedes 호: `서울특별시 중구 세종대로 110 12층 1205호`. Ground and basement floors are written 1층 and 지하 1층 (B1).

A romanised Korean address is written in the opposite order
Korean writes the province first and the building last. English writes the building first and the province last. A Korean address arriving in Latin script may be in either order, and position is therefore not a reliable way to tell which level a value belongs to. Read the suffix instead.

## How CDQ models a Korean address

The CDQ address model has two parallel hierarchies. **Administrative areas** represent the political containers, typed `REGION` and `COUNTY`. **Localities** represent the places themselves, typed `CITY`, `DISTRICT`, `QUARTER` or `BLOCK`. Roads are held as **thoroughfares** with the number in its own field, and blocks and units as typed **premises**.

Korea maps as follows:

| Korean level | CDQ concept | Type | SAP field |
|  --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 시 / 도 province level | administrative area, level 1 | `REGION` | `region` |
| 시 / 군 / 구 city, county or district | locality, level 1 | `CITY` | `city` |
| 읍 / 면 / 동 town, township or neighbourhood | locality, level 2 | `DISTRICT` | `district` |
| 도로명 road name | thoroughfare | `STREET` | street |
| 건물번호 building number | thoroughfare number | n/a | house number |
| 동 apartment block | premise | `BUILDING` | building |
| 호 unit | premise | `APARTMENT` | room number |
| 층 floor | premise | `LEVEL` | floor |
| post code | post code | `REGULAR` | post code |


A unit number is reached through `APARTMENT` or `ROOM`, both of which fill the SAP room number. The Korean parser types a numeric block (`101동`) as `UNIT`, which reaches the SAP street 5 line rather than the building field, so a block number can land there when it was recognised by parsing rather than by identification.

### Why the province is the only administrative level

Korea's second administrative level, the 시 / 군 / 구, is a place as much as a jurisdiction: it is what a Korean would call the city. Placing it in the locality hierarchy keeps it on the city line of every output, which is where a consumer looks for it, and leaves the county level free rather than filling it with a value that no receiving system reads for Korea. The same reasoning places the 동 on the district line.

### Korean addresses are identified, not only parsed

For Korea CDQ runs two steps. A Korean parser first splits an address string by its suffixes: the post code, 층, 호, 번지, a numeric 동, road names ending in 대로, 로 or 길 (including 번길), and building words such as 빌딩 or 타워. Where the Korean address index is enabled, the levels are then assembled into a single string and identified against an index built from the national postal address database, and the index returns the complete structured address.

The second step exists because a Korean address cannot be reliably split by rule: the same characters mean different things at different levels, the two numbering systems are indistinguishable in isolation, and the romanised order is not fixed. Matching the whole string against known addresses answers all three questions at once, and it is the only route that can return the road name address for a lot number address and the other way round.

The index is a data source
Korean address identification runs when the Korean address index is enabled for your workspace. Where it is not, the Korean parser's result stands and the levels are not checked against the national database.

### Mapping the region to an SAP region key

CDQ delivers the province with its ISO 3166-2 code. An SAP system does not validate against ISO: it validates the region field against its own region key table, `T005S`, which is part of a customer's configuration. That key exists for tax and jurisdiction purposes, which is why it follows national tax or statistical numbering rather than ISO, and why the level it sits at differs from one country to the next.

The region key is customer-specific configuration, so this standard does not define one: a `T005S` is specific to a customer and to a client, and no single value would be correct everywhere. What this standard fixes is the ISO 3166-2 code. The mapping from it to the key your system expects is yours to maintain.

For Korea the key your configuration holds is conventionally the two digit province number, which is the numeric part of the ISO code you receive, so the mapping is a transformation rather than a lookup.

Treat the ISO code as the value CDQ guarantees and the SAP key as a mapping you own.

### Worked example

`서울특별시 중구 세종대로 110`, in the CDQ address model:

| Field | Value |
|  --- | --- |
| Country | `KR` |
| Administrative area 1 (`REGION`) | 서울특별시 |
| Administrative area 1 short name | `11` |
| Locality 1 (`CITY`) | 중구 |
| Locality 2 (`DISTRICT`) | empty for this address, since the road name system replaces the neighbourhood |
| Thoroughfare (`STREET`) | 세종대로 |
| Thoroughfare number | `110` |
| Post code | `04524` |


## Reference data CDQ maintains for Korea

These tables are extracts
The examples below show the shape of each dataset, not its full contents. The complete published lists for Korea are on the CDQ Wiki page [business partner metadata for Korea](https://meta.cdq.com/DataModel:CDQ/Business_Partner/Address/Country/KR), which also covers legal forms, identifier types and the integrated data sources.

### Provinces, metropolitan cities and special cities

**All 17**, each with its ISO 3166-2 code and names in Korean, English, Chinese, French and German.

| Code | Korean | English | Also matched as |
|  --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `KR-11` | 서울특별시 | Seoul | Seoul |
| `KR-26` | 부산광역시 | Busan | Busan, 부산 |
| `KR-41` | 경기도 | Gyeonggi Province | Gyeonggi, Gyeonggi-do |
| `KR-49` | 제주특별자치도 | Jeju Province | Jeju, Jeju-do |
| `KR-50` | 세종특별자치시 | Sejong City | Sejong-si |


The Korean name carries its administrative suffix, so 서울특별시 rather than 서울, and 경기도 rather than 경기. The suffix identifies the kind of unit and is part of the reference value.

The names of `KR-42` (강원도, Gangwon Province) and `KR-45` (전라북도, North Jeolla Province) are still the ones from before the 2023 and 2024 renames; the ISO codes are unchanged and still correct.

### Address index

A Korean address index built from the national postal address database, refreshed from the source. It is what answers an address identification request and what allows a lot number address and a road name address to be recognised as the same place.

### Address vocabulary

Three terms are maintained for Korea: 동 (building) and 호 (apartment), both typed premises, and `C.P.O. Box` (post office box).

### Post code format

Five digits. The six digit form used before 2015, written as three digits, a hyphen and three digits, is registered as the superseded format so that a legacy value is recognised rather than rejected.

Both forms are validated and neither is rewritten, so a legacy six digit code is recognised as superseded and is not converted to the current five digit code. That conversion needs the address rather than the code.

What CDQ standardises
The **province** is standardised against reference data: whether it arrives in Korean with or without its suffix, or romanised in either the current or an older spelling, the canonical Korean name and the ISO code are written back.

The **whole address** is identified against the Korean address index where that data source is enabled, and the structured result replaces the submitted levels.

**Post codes** are validated against the five digit format, with the six digit form recognised as superseded.

Levels below the province are those of the Korean parser where the index is not enabled.

## Current limitations

These are the gaps worth knowing about before designing an integration.

| Limitation | What it means for an integration |
|  --- | --- |
| **The Korean address vocabulary is mostly not published** | Only 동, 호 and `C.P.O. Box` are maintained as reference data. The level markers 시, 도, 군, 구, 읍, 면, 리, the floor word 층 and the road words 대로, 로, 길 and 번길 are not, so the marker words that tell a level regardless of written order are applied by the Korean parser and not by the shared vocabulary. |
| **The generic parser does not run for Korea, and the address index is optional** | Korea has its own parser, which cannot distinguish every building number from a lot number or every neighbourhood from a block. The address index resolves those cases, but runs only where it is enabled for your workspace; where it is not, the parser's levels are kept as they are. |
| **The province renames of 2023 and 2024 are not yet in the reference data** | 강원특별자치도 and 전북특별자치도, and their English names, are not held as names of `KR-42` and `KR-45`. Send the ISO code where you can, and expect either spelling in source data. |
| **Korean localities are not transliterated** | A Korean locality is not romanised and a romanised locality is not converted to Korean, so whichever script an address arrives in is the script it leaves in. Where you need both, supply both. |
| **Geocoding for Korea is resolved on the road name** | Coordinates are resolved through a single provider, and the building number is deliberately left out of that request because the provider answers more reliably on the road name alone. A returned coordinate is therefore accurate to the road rather than to the building. |


Keep both address systems where you have them
Where your source holds a road name address and a lot number address for the same partner, keep both. They are not redundant: the road name address is the legal one, the lot number address is what many Korean systems and people still use, and neither can be recovered from the other without the national database.

## Summary

A Korean address is written largest first, from the province down to the building, and it exists in two systems. The road name system, legal since 2014, locates a building by a road name ending in 대로, 로 or 길 and a number derived from its position along that road. The lot number system it replaced locates the same building by a neighbourhood and a land parcel number. Both are in circulation and neither converts into the other by rule.

CDQ places the province in administrative area level 1, the city, county or district in locality level 1, and the neighbourhood in locality level 2, so that each reaches its own output field. The road name goes to the street and the building number to the house number. The apartment block and the unit are typed premises.

All 17 provinces and metropolitan cities are maintained as CDQ reference data with their Korean names, administrative suffixes and ISO codes. Below that, a Korean address is identified as a whole against a Korean address index built from the national postal address database rather than parsed field by field, because the same characters mean different things at different levels and the written order is not fixed. Only three Korean terms are published as vocabulary, which is why the identification route matters so much.

## Related Resources

- [Business partner metadata for Korea](https://meta.cdq.com/DataModel:CDQ/Business_Partner/Address/Country/KR)
- [Japan Address Standard](/documentation/_public/product-manuals/address-guard/country-standards/japan-address-standard)
- [Thailand Address Standard](/documentation/_public/product-manuals/address-guard/country-standards/thailand-address-standard)
- [India Address Standard](/documentation/_public/product-manuals/address-guard/country-standards/india-address-standard)


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