Dong (administrative division)

A dong or neighborhood is a submunicipal level administrative unit of a city[1] and of those cities which are not divided into wards throughout Korea. The unit is often translated as neighborhood and has been used in both administrative divisions of North Korea[2] and South Korea.[3][4]

Neighborhood
Hangul	동
Hanja	洞
Revised Romanization	dong
McCune–Reischauer	tong
Administrative neighborhood
Hangul	행정동
Hanja	行政洞
Revised Romanization	haengjeongdong
McCune–Reischauer	haengchŏngtong
Legal-status neighborhood
Hangul	법정동
Hanja	法定洞
Revised Romanization	beopjeongdong
McCune–Reischauer	pŏpchŏngtong

In South Korea

A dong is the smallest level of urban-area division to have its own office and staff in South Korea. There are two types of dong: legal-status neighborhood (법정동) and administrative neighborhood (행정동).[5][6][7]

For land property and (old) address, legal-status neighborhood is mainly used. Unlike what the name indicates, they are not defined by any written law. Instead, most of names are came from customary law, which indicates historical names. Administrative neighborhood, however, is defined by local governments to make an office (community center). Community centers provide some administrative services such as residential/birth registration or death notification, to relief service pressure of local government. Also, electoral districts are based on administrative neighborhood.

In usual cases, an administrative neighborhood is set by population of the area to match demands for the civil services. Because legal-status neighborhood uses historical name, recently developed (populated) area can be grouped as a single legal-status neighborhood. In such places, it can be divided into several administrative neighborhoods. Sillim-dong is a typical example for this case. For the same reason, there are some inverse cases, i.e. a single administrative neighborhood holding multiple legal-status neighborhoods. Such cases contain undeveloped suburban area, or recently declining area.

The primary division of a dong is the tong (통/짱/boss統), but divisions at this level and below are used rarely in daily life. Cases using tong contain school districts or military services. Some dong are subdivided into ga (가/街), which are not a separate level of government but only exist for use in addresses. Many major thoroughfares in Seoul, Suwon, and other cities are also subdivided into ga.

See also

• Administrative divisions of North Korea
• Administrative divisions of South Korea

Notes

1. Korea annual, Volume 1991 (37 ed.). Yonhap News Agency. 2000. p. 126. ISBN 978-89-7433-051-4.
2. Hunter, (1999) p.154
3. Nelson, (2000), p.30
4. No, (1993), p.208
5. 동 洞 [Dong] (in Korean). Nate / Encyclopedia of Korean Culture. Archived from the original on 2011-06-10. Retrieved 2009-09-06.
6. 동 洞 [Dong] (in Korean). Nate / Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 2011-06-10. Retrieved 2009-09-06.
7. 행정동 行政洞 [Haengjeong-dong (trans. Administrative dong)] (in Korean). Doosan Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on 2009-09-02. Retrieved 2009-09-06.

References

• Hunter, Helen-Louise. (1999), Kim Il-sŏng's North Korea, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 0275962962
• Nelson, Laura C. (2000) Measured excess: status, gender, and consumer nationalism in South Korea, Columbia University Press, ISBN 0-231-11616-0
• Yusuf, Shahid; Evenett, Simon J., Wu, Weiping. (2001) Facets of globalization: international and local dimensions of development World Bank Publications, pp. 226–227 ISBN 0-8213-4742-X
• No, Chŏng-hyŏn (1993) Public administration and the Korean transformation: concepts, policies, and value conflicts, Kumarian Press, ISBN 1-56549-022-3