The Characteristics of Police Station Names in South Korea: Focused on the Comparison between 1945 and 2018

It has been 73 years since the Korean national police were founded. However, there has been neither professional nor academic studies about police station names. This study investigates the linguistic and geographic characteristics of police station names by comparing two different time periods: 1945 and 2018. The results are as follows. In syllable analysis, names with ‘two-syllable’ in 1945 showed the highest portion with 95.2%, but in 2018 ‘two-syllable’ was 52.9% and ‘four-syllable’ was 42.7%. In word type analysis, ‘Sino-Korea word’ was high with 100% in 1945 and 87.8% (in fact, 100%) in 2018. In name source analysis, administrative district name has major influence showing 97.8% in 1945 and 93.3% in 2018. Some incongruent police station names were observed. However, the incongruity has been greatly improved. Continuous efforts have been made to match police station names with administrative district names for enhancing citizens’ convenience.