National License Plate System Takes Effect Next Year

The “national license plate” system, which removes the classification by regional groups, will take effect starting January 1 of next year.

According to the guidelines for the modification, registration and revision of the new license plate system that the Ministry of Construction and Transportation (MCT) had sent to 16 cities and provinces, cars which are registered after January of next year will receive license numbers in the form of “00가 0000” without the indication of the city of the province.

Instead, the front two numbers will be used to indicate the type of vehicle and its registered district.

The type of vehicles will be categorized as the following: passenger car (01-69), van (70-79), freight car (80-97), specialized vehicle (98-99). The district number will be restricted to passenger cars, and will be categorized as the following: Seoul (01-16), Busan (17-20), Daegu (21-24), Jeju (69).

For this system, the license number doesn’t have to be re-registered when moving to another city or province.

Issuing the new national license plates will start on January 1, 2004 and will be issued to newly registered vehicles, those who need to receive new plates after January 1, and those who wish to have new license plates. Local and suburban buses, express buses, chartered buses, taxis, rental cars, and vehicles in the transportation business such as freight cars are not eligible for the national license plate.

MCT plans to maintain unity by restricting the material to 1 mm thick aluminum plates.

Jae-Seong Hwang jsonhng@donga.com