Wednesday, August 17, 2011

A history of subway station names

Awhile ago the Joongang Daily published two articles looking at the history of place names in the Seoul area through Subway station names. They can be read here:
Part 1. Part 2.

Odd that they didn't include Mapo, AKA 'hemp port.'

5 comments:

Kamiza said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Geoffwah said...

My favorite is Big Momma Mountain (Daemosan).

Kamiza said...

Interesting. She does make several obvious mistakes though
(Doseon lived in the 800's, so thee is no way that he could have met Muhak in the 1390's as he was searcing or a place to build a new capital, unless Doseon was reincarnated in the form of the farmer whom Muhak asked (after having heard the farmer exclaim to his ox "무학!!!")about a good place to build a palace and received the reply "왕십리" [해 10 li].
She makes a few other obvious maistakes oo, but I will just e-mail her and see what her source was.
Overall, interesting topic though!

Kamiza said...

and yess I see the rony in all of my own typographical mistakes in my ost--it's my darn keyboard

Anonymous said...

Interested readers who understand Korean could try Seoul Metro’s website, for example its entry on I­mae Station (Korean). You can also search by first letter of a station’s English name, although most content will still be displayed in Korean, not least the etymology: I­mae station (1 % English, 99 % Korean)
If you want to dig further, consult a ji­myeong sa­jeon to find out how e.g. Hwi­gyeong got its name.