Why Do Seoul Subway Stations Have a Company Name in Brackets?

You step off the plane, open the subway map, and something looks off. The station is not called Euljiro 3-ga. It is called Euljiro 3-ga (Shinhan Card). Yeoksam is Yeoksam (Centerfield). Myeongdong is Myeongdong (Woori Financial Town). It reads like a glitch in the translation, or like the map was printed from a corrupted file.

It is neither. Those brackets are line items on a balance sheet, and the balance sheet is in very bad shape.

What is a “co-named” subway station in Seoul?

Seoul Metro sells the right to append a second name to a station. The Korean term is 역명병기 (yeokmyeong byeonggi), literally “station name co-notation,” and the purchased name itself is the 부역명 (bu-yeokmyeong), the sub-station name.

Seoul began auctioning these in 2016, and the motive was not purely financial. Hospitals, universities and large companies had spent years lobbying the city to get their names onto station signage for free, arguing that they were local landmarks. Rather than adjudicate an endless queue of claims, the city decided to charge for it and let money settle the argument.

The winner gets its name in brackets on platform signage, line maps, in-car displays and station announcements for three years, with one three-year renewal available without a fresh auction. Then the name goes back on the block. It is an advertising product with a contract term, not a change to the station’s identity, and if nobody renews, the bracket simply disappears.

How much does a company pay for a station name?

Far more than most people guess, and with enormous spread between stations. A dental clinic paid 1.111 billion won for Gangnam. A quiet station on an outer branch line may not attract a single qualifying bid.

🏆 Reported winning bids for Seoul subway co-naming rights (three-year terms)

The oddly precise Musinsa figure, 329,292,929 won, is not a typo. Korean sealed-bid auctions reward bidders who nudge a few won above a round number, and companies routinely craft digits that look like a deliberate signature rather than a calculation.

Headline bids are for the full three-year term, which makes them sound larger than the annual commitment. Reported annual prices give a better sense of what an ordinary station costs.

💴 Reported annual co-naming prices at mid-tier Seoul stations

At 80 million won a year, a station name is within reach of a single mid-size clinic. That fact shapes everything about who ends up on the signage.

Why does Seoul Metro sell its own station names?

Because the operator is deep in the red, and has been for a long time.

Seoul Metro’s net losses ran to 407.4 billion won in 2017, ballooned to 1.1137 trillion won in 2020 during the pandemic, and stood at 517.3 billion won in 2023. Accumulated losses reached roughly 7.34 trillion won as of 2024, with debt around 6.83 trillion won, and interest payments alone running at about 84 billion won a year. In 2025 the operating deficit was 826.8 billion won, up 14.2% on the year before, which works out to a loss of roughly ₩781 on every passenger carried.

The single largest identifiable cause is free travel. Koreans aged 65 and over ride the subway at no charge, a policy that dates to a 1984 presidential instruction extending an existing discount into a full exemption. In 2025 the resulting revenue shortfall at Seoul Metro alone came to 448.8 billion won, more than half the year’s deficit. Across six metropolitan rail operators nationwide the 2025 figure was 775.4 billion won, and in April 2026 Seoul Metro formally asked the central government to cover 576.1 billion won of it. National rail operator Korail receives statutory compensation for the same policy; city subway operators receive none.

Against a hole of that size, co-naming revenue of ₩14.97bn over four years is close to a rounding error. It is, however, revenue that costs almost nothing to produce beyond reprinting some signs.

That last set of conditions produces one of the stranger features of the system. In one 2024 round, six of ten stations offered drew no acceptable bid, including heavily trafficked names like Jonggak, Hongik University Station, Sinsa, Gongdeok and City Hall. Meanwhile around 90% of existing sponsors chose to renew when their term expired, which suggests the ones who buy in tend to think it works.

Station names were already political long before the money

It is tempting to read the bracket as a new commercial intrusion into an otherwise neutral map. The history says otherwise. Seoul station names have been contested, lobbied over and rewritten for decades, and universities were doing it before companies were allowed to.

📜 Seoul stations that changed name, and why

The Chongshin case is the clearest illustration of how much a name is worth. The university helped fund construction of the Line 4 station in exchange for the name. When Line 7 opened, the campus turned out to sit closer to a different station, and the city moved to rename the stop Isu in 2000. The university sued, lost, kept objecting, and the matter was settled in February 2001 with a split decision: the Line 4 platform reads Chongshin University (Isu), and the Line 7 platform reads Isu. The changeover, covering signage, maps, announcements and systems, was reported to cost about 300 million won.

Soongsil University’s campaign displaced something older. The station had been formally designated Salpijae in 1992, a Joseon-era place name meaning roughly “look carefully as you go”. After a petition drive, a relocated main gate and a local survey, the primary name became Soongsil University in 1995 and Salpijae was demoted to a secondary name.

And Jamsil Saenae shows how slowly a rename actually lands. The decision to drop Sincheon, which travellers confused with Sinchon, was made in 2015 and announced in 2016, but the signage and announcement systems were not fully converted until 31 January 2017, held up in part by a dispute between the district office and the operator over who would pay.

Who actually buys these names?

Hospitals, more than anyone else. Medical institutions make up the largest share of winning bidders, with dental and cosmetic clinics especially active, followed by universities and religious organisations.

The economics are straightforward. A clinic competes in a dense local market against dozens of near-identical competitors within walking distance, and a station name is an advertisement that appears on every platform sign, every line map, and in every announcement, for three years, with no way for a passenger to skip it. At 80 to 230 million won a year for an ordinary station, that is a rational media buy for a practice of reasonable size.

Does the bracketed name ever change?

Yes, and sometimes fast enough to embarrass a guidebook.

CJ Olive Young won Seongsu Station in August 2024 for 1 billion won, then handed the naming rights back in November of the same year, paying a reported 100 million won penalty to walk away after criticism that the brand did not really represent the neighbourhood. The station went back to auction. In September 2025 the fashion platform Musinsa took it for 329 million won as the only qualifying bidder.

Two sponsors in fourteen months, on one of the most photographed stations in the city. Any printed map, screenshot or blog post more than a year or two old may be showing you a sponsor who is long gone. The base station name, though, has not changed in decades.

Which name should you actually type into a map app?

The plain one. Always.

If you are wondering why you are being told to use Naver Map at all rather than the app on your phone at home, that is a longer story: see our guide to why Google Maps struggles in Korea.

Do other Korean cities do this too?

Busan runs the same scheme across its 92 subway stations, also on three-year terms with one renewal. Its published starting prices are far lower than Seoul’s: Seomyeon, the busiest station in the city, opened at 110.26 million won, with Yeonsan at 95.43 million, Deokcheon at 92.47 million and Suyeong at 84.24 million. Those are opening prices, not final results.

Korail, Incheon Transit and Daegu Transit all operate versions of the scheme as well, driven by the same combination of transfer discounts, free elderly travel and no central compensation.

Is Korea unusual in doing this?

No, though it is unusually systematic about it. Transit naming rights are sold in a number of countries, generally one landmark station at a time rather than as a standing product line.

🌍 Transit station naming rights sold internationally

What sets Seoul apart is scale and routine. New York sold one station and stopped. Seoul runs a standing auction calendar, with a fresh round of ten stations closing for bids in September 2026 covering Jonggak, Sindorim, Guro Digital Complex, Hongik University Station, Chungmuro, Magok, Eungam, Digital Media City, Nonhyeon and Bokjeong.

Is any of this controversial?

Constantly. Critics argue that a public transit network selling its place names hands a civic asset to whoever writes the biggest cheque, and that a station named after a dental clinic tells a rider nothing useful about where they are. Auditing and press scrutiny has also focused on negotiated contracts awarded without competition after failed auctions, which reduce revenue while keeping the commercial name in place.

Defenders point at the 7.34 trillion won hole, the 448.8 billion won in unreimbursed free travel, and ask for a better idea.

Both arguments have been running since 2016, and the auctions keep happening. Worth knowing while you ride: the bracket is not part of Seoul. It is part of Seoul’s accounting.

Related reading

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• Seoul subway seat etiquette
• The most beautiful subway stations in Seoul