Korean addresses: why your supplier has two of them

Korea replaced its address system in 2014, and both survive in practice. A supplier may give you either, and they will look nothing alike despite describing the same building.

The two systems

The road name system is official and is what you should use for shipping and documentation. The lot number system describes land parcels rather than streets, and remains in everyday use — older businesses often still quote it from habit.

Telling them apart

• A road name address contains 로 or 길 — “-ro” or “-gil” — followed by a building number
• A lot number address contains 동 — a neighbourhood — followed by numbers with a hyphen

Reading the hierarchy

Korean addresses run largest to smallest, the reverse of Western convention. So 서울시 강남구 테헤란로 123 is city, then district, then road and building — and when written in English the order is usually flipped, which is a frequent source of confusion in shipping documents.

The registered address is not necessarily the factory

The 사업장 소재지 on a registration is where the business is registered. That may be a head office, an accountant’s address, or a residential address for a small operator — and not where anything is made or stored.

This matters if you are planning a visit or an audit. Ask directly for the address of the production or warehouse site, which may be quite separate. A discrepancy is entirely normal and not in itself a warning sign; assuming they are the same is what causes wasted trips.

Note also that the address is not among the fields verifiable against tax records — see which certificate fields can be checked.