English slogans of Korean cities: the complete list

As much as I love Korea, it is undeniable that all Korean cities tend to look more or less the same. They may be small, medium, or large; they may have various mountains, rivers, beaches and temples of which the locals are proud; but apart from that, there is little to separate one from the next.

If you are the administrator of a Korean city, then, how can you distinguish your city from all the others? If you answered, “By appending a random English word to the city name and using it as a slogan,” then you are not new to Korea.

Since I came to Korea I’ve been interested in the English slogans of Korean cities, an obsession which seems to be shared by a lot of my fellow waegukin. It is hard to say what makes them so fascinating. Perhaps it is their random quality; the frequent lack of any obvious connection to the city itself. Perhaps it is the language: the adjective is as likely to be nonsensical as it is to be sensical; indeed, it may not even be an adjective.

I recently went looking for a complete list of these, but couldn’t find one on either Google or Naver. I did, however, manage to find a number of partial lists, from which I’ve pieced this together. While I’ve done my best, it is probably not complete yet, so please let me know any omissions or errors in the comments – quite a few came from Korean blogs, and may have transcription/romanization errors.

The main sources were here, here, here and here. The commentary is mine.