The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has decided to standardize English names for places and cultural assets.
 
The ministry reached the decision as the different English spellings of places by government agency and organizations can lead to confusion.
 
Under the decision, the full name of a location will be romanized followed by a description of the location.
 
As an example, Namsan will be written as Namsan Mountain and Gyeongbok Palace will be written as Gyeongbokgung Palace.
 
The ministry said it devised the unified standard for names together with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the Cultural Heritage Administration, the Korea Tourism Organization, the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the National Geographic Information Institute.