Seoul wants foreigners to track down mistakes on signs
The original Korean sign means “Meeting point in Cheong Wa Dae (the Blue House),” in Korean, but it has been wrongly translated into English as a “Staring point for Cheong Wa Dae.” / Korea Times file
By Hong Dam-young, Park Si-soo
Seoul City is seeking the help of its residents -- Koreans and foreigners -- to note errors in street signs written in foreign languages.
Signs in English, Chinese and Japanese in public places such as subway stations, bus stops, tourist information centers and historic sites are the target.
The city government will start taking details of errors from Sept. 21 to Oct. 4. Reports can be made by email (
or ghdekadud@gmail.com or
) with a picture of the sign and details of its location.
Seoul City will review errors with experts to determine the signs to be corrected. Anyone confused about the names of Korea’s traditional or popular places, streets and so forth, should go to
https://dictionary.seoul.go.kr
, Seoul’s official reference website.
This sign has a wrong abbreviation for “Bridge,” which should be corrected to “Brg.” / Courtesy of Youtube
People who collect the most notable errors will receive gift vouchers and souvenirs.
Seoul City will also deploy an inspection team, comprised of 80 students here from English-speaking countries, China and Japan, to improve tourism services for foreigners and to find errors on street signs.
“Multilingual signs are important standards to assess a country’s competitiveness in the tourism business,” a Seoul City official said. “We want to make sure that foreigners in Seoul suffer no inconvenience.”
For more information, visit
or call 02-2133-2798.