Starting this month, Korea's transport ministry has introduced a new licence plate numbering system.
However, the government is still working to reduce the confusion caused by outdated parking management systems.
Park Se-young has more.
From now on, license plates will come with an extra number.
This is the first change to the license plates in 13 years …since the plates turned white from green in 2006.
Two years earlier in 2004, the Korean government omitted the names of cities or provinces on license plates to reduce regionalism.
The number of available registration numbers ran out at the end of last year, with the number of registered cars surpassing 23 million.
The inclusion of an extra digit is expected to increase the number of available combinations by about 210 million.
"Existing number plates can be used as they are. Any new vehicles that are registered will receive the eight-character plates."
To recognize these new number plates, around 22-thousand facilities nationwide need to update their plate recognition systems.
By the end of August, 87-point-six percent of those facilities were supposed to have been updated.
Of that number, public facilities made up 97-point-nine percent and private facilities like hospitals and shopping malls made up 70-point-four percent.
This means that cars with new plates will have difficulties entering or exiting three out of ten private facilities.
Starting September, an estimated 150-thousand cars each month will be given new license plates.
To minimize inconvenience to drivers, the transport ministry and local government bodies will encourage the arrangement of manpower to manually calculate parking charges and open parking barriers.
They will also form a response team in each region to respond to complaints.
Park Se-young, Arirang News.