For what it’s worth, the English home page for the Seoul city government says at the bottom, “Seoul Metropolitan Government” (contrary to what I claim the “official” translation should be), which interestingly is analogous to “Tokyo Metropolitan Government” (T??ky??-to; æ?±?º???½), which is what Tokyo calls itself on its English home page.

And in Los Angeles, at least, the divisions (e.g., Koreatown, Little Tokyo, Chinatown, Fairfax, South Central, etc.) do in fact have some administrative meaning, in terms of government services, voting, etc.

I have always thought that “precinct” is a good word for -??™ and that “borough” (after New York City) is just as good as “ward.”

As for “ward,” I have also read places where -??? were referred to as “district.” I have even written that in places where the reader might not be expected to know what a -??? is. But I believe that, officially, they are called “wards.” Even after the NAKL Romanization simplification, I think the new signs still say “ward.” I don’t drive by ?????°????²­ as much anymore, so I haven’t been able to check.

(Although while gun get upgraded to si when they are part of provinces, they would get split up into gu if they were part of cities….)

And I made the distinction between the boroughs of New York (its counties) and the -gun/-kun (Korea’s counties), since the latter are non-urban by definition (e.g., -kun/-gun turn into -shi when get big enough).