Seoul

//səʊl// name

name ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    The capital city of South Korea, also the historical capital of Korea from 1394 until the country was divided in 1945.

    "The Joint Commission provided for in the Moscow agreement began its work at Seoul, the ancient capital of Korea, on March 20, 1946. This Commission, which was, of course, the key element in the plan agreed upon at Moscow, was deadlocked almost from the start."

  2. 2
    the South Korean government metonymically

    "To that end, Seoul and Taipei signed a reciprocal driver’s license agreement in February, with immediate effect, to make driving easier for visitors on each side, he said."

Synonyms

All synonyms
capital of south koreahan-ch'enghanseonghanseonghanyangkeijō

Example

More examples

"Seoul is the capital of South Korea."

Etymology

From Korean 서울 (Seoul, literally “capital city”), originally from Claude-Charles Dallet's French-based romanization of Korean, reinforced by the 1959 South Korean Ministry of Education romanization of Korean, which transcribed the Korean vowel ㅓ (/⁠ʌ⁠/) with the digraph "eo" and which was official until 1984. Note that English Seoul predates the Revised Romanization romanization of Seoul. The two romanization systems simply produce identical forms.

Related phrases

south korea

More for "seoul"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.