Seoul Searching: Pusan or Busan?

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Foreign visitors to Seoul's new World Cup soccer stadium got a surprise recently when they saw some of the English-language signs posted around the just-opened facility. Who exactly is supposed to use the "Disabled Elevator" and the Smorking Room? And how many "spectors" is the organizing committee expecting? Local papers had a field day with these and other signs spotted by the visitors. A spokesman for Seoul's World Cup organizing committee blames the glitches on a computer problem. But it seems nobody had the wit to have an English-speaking foreigner stroll through the stadium before opening day.

The committee is hard at working fixing the naughty computer responsible for these glitches. But Seoul City Hall is also concerned about the 110,000 English- language road signs around the country. They suffer from a few glitches as well, and a slew of inconsistencies since the government switched to a new Romanization system last year. Some signs use the new system, but a lot haven't been repainted. The new system is already confusing enough. The country's main airport is now at Incheon, not Inchon, and the port city of Pusan is now correctly spelled Busan. The problem is some town names look awfully similar to my untrained eye. For example, Kongju and Kyongju, which are on opposite sides of the peninsula, are now spelled Gongju and Gyeongju, respectively. Pop quiz: You are racing down the highway headed to Gyeongju and you see a sign for Kyongju. Do you a) keep going b) turn around c) fly to Bali. Even the town is confused. Its official website address uses "Kyongju" but the home page states "Welcome to Gyeongju."

Enter Seoul City Hall. The city is setting up -- you guessed it -- a task force to tackle the problem. It will field calls from citizens who spot problems with signs around the country. There will even be a radio and television campaign to encourage folks to look for grammatical errors and spelling booboos. Three committee members will check signs spotted by these spelling-bee vigilantes while a fourth will coordinate with the 11 departments of the various ministries that have a say in how traffic signs are designed. Yes, 11 -- they all sat down for a first meeting this week. Could this possibly be part of the problem?

And why this strange reluctance to farm out some of the work to people who actually speak English? The committee says it will "outsource" some of the proofreading to foreigners if it needs to. A spokeswoman asked if TIME might like to help. Well, not really. But we have a suggestion. While you are repainting all those signs, how about positioning them a little better? Even highway signs that are spelled intelligibly seem to pop up at the last minute, way too late for you to get into the right exit lane without swerving through four lanes of heavy traffic, which of course is what everybody does anyway. Hey, it might even shut up those nitpicky foreigners.