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If you ever find yourself confusedly running around South Korea in need of directions,
do yourself a favor:
Suppress that first instinct to pull out your phone to open Google Maps.
It wouldn't do you any good.
In South Korea, it is about as useful as a map made of paper.
You notice something's wrong right from the get-go.
While the rest of the planet seems unremarkably homogenous,
South Korea first appears as a white void.
Get a bit closer and a map appears, a map that doesn't seem to belong there at all.
Instead of the dynamic map you're used to,
you get a static image of a map that looks and feels very differently.
You can't click on points on the map for further information which isn't
great when much of it is only available in Korean,
and when you try to actually go somewhere, it gets worse.
You choose your starting point, choose your destination, hit enter aaaand:
Nothing.
Except for public transit, Google Maps does not offer any directions in South Korea.
No cycling, no driving, not even walking directions.
The reason why is found on this piece of virtual paper,
which forbids the publication of maps featuring military
bases and installations, basically saying:
"Go ahead, produce and publish maps of South Korea, but leave out the naughty bits."
A country can't just enforce its laws wherever,
so it's essential that South Korean map data stays in South Korea.
As soon as a company like Google, with servers all over the world,
has access to its map data, it can't be put back in the box.
That company could, legally speaking, do with it whatever it pleased as long
as it's not doing it within South Korea's borders.
And because Google has declined to run its map servers from there,
the maps it gets consist of processed data, basically map images in different resolutions,
with sensitive locations already cut out.
That there's stuff missing only really becomes
clear when you pull up a military base and switch from map to satellite view,
which, since it's recorded from far above,
not within South Korean airspace, Google can show uncensored.
Click satellite view, and the secret is revealed.
Google isn't too happy about the sub-standard maps it's stuck with,
so for years and years it has requested access to South Korea's raw map data.
Now, Google usually doesn't censor its maps -
actually...
Oh. Google is no stranger to messing with satellite or map data.
As seen in Spain, Greece, Mexico, China, Belgium, France, even Antarctica.
Satellite imagery of all of Israel,
Palestine and the Golan Heights is intentionally kept at a lower resolution,
and look at that, China comes back for a bonus round because
it also algorithmically shifts every map point of the entire country,
which lets you drive *on* the South China Sea at times.
Usually that's justified with national security concerns, and in South Korea, it's no different,
since there is the small matter of it being
strictly speaking still at war with its neighbor to the north.
Should the conflict boil over once again, the thought goes,
North Korea would have a strategic advantage,
simply looking up South Korean bases online to know exactly where to point the missiles.
On the other hand, satellite imagery of both Koreas is already widely available,
even if complete map data is not.
And cutting out chunks of a map doesn't do much for camouflage
when you can find South Korean military bases by looking for an unnatural gap in the map
or literally searching for "south korean military bases".
Whether they're helpful or not, the restrictions have led to the peculiar situation
that Google Maps is much more useful in North Korea, than in the South.
Let's say you're on holiday in Seoul.
You ask Google Maps for the walking route back to
your hotel and what you get is public transit directions...and that's it.
If you instead plan to take a leisurely stroll from the town of Yodok in the North Korean
mountains to the "secret" concentration camp a few kilometers to the north,
Google Maps tells you the exact route,
gives you an estimated travel time of about two hours and even offers driving directions,
should you prefer not to move about an isolated military dictatorship on foot.
How is that possible?
North Korea, shockingly, does not cooperate with US internet giants.
But if you want an accurate map, you need actual surveyor people on
the ground surveying the area with surveying tools to get good data.
That's not a possibility here. So what does Google do?
It let's you fill in the map. For regions where high-quality map data is not available,
either because whoever has it doesn't want to share or it never existed in the first place,
Google lets users add streets and shops and houses based on
satellite imagery to literally put uncharted places on the map.
That is by no means a perfect approach.
Satellite images show that North Korean maps are
far from complete, and there's always the possibility of online vandalism,
but in case you don't enjoy your stay in
North Korea and want to make a rather hasty journey home,
you can count on Google Maps to show you the fastest route towards the border.
But despite major wins in the country that wants not to be mapped,
Google Maps' lack of functionality in the South makes it borderline obsolete.
Without directions, you might as well draw your own maps.
But why again can't Google offer directions in South Korea?
Sure, they only get already censored, pre-rendered map tiles, not the actual location data,
but so does everybody's favorite map service, and it does offer full directions.
Why? We can only speculate ... so let's do that.
Google doesn't censor its satellite images of South Korea, Bing does.
What Google clearly shows to be an army base in Seoul,
Bing turns into an inconspicuous forest ... with a Starbucks inside it.
"But maybe Bing's map provider just has better data than Google's", I hear you say.
"Possible."
Were it not for the fact that both Google and Bing get their South Korean
maps from one and the same place, telecommunications giant SK Telecom.
Even those pre-rendered map tiles Google can get its hands on are extremely outdated.
Take the example of this road in Pusan.
They built that road in 2015, along with a huge hotel complex, but, grab on to your seats,
on 2020's Google Maps, it's still missing,
while on Bing, which, again, gets its maps from the same source, the road's all there.
It seems that Google is intentionally fed worse map material.
And where Google is missing out, others benefit.
Unlike their US competitor, South Korean internet companies Naver and Kakao
do have access to precise, up-to-date map data because
they run their businesses from within South Korea
and censor their maps according to South Korean law.
The better map data allows them to offer both, fully dynamic maps,
you know, the "click on a point and get all the info you might need"-kind,
and, of course, full directions.
Compare that to Google's digital excuse of a paper map
and it's no shocker why no one uses Google Maps in South Korea.
*Valley Girl Accent* "Hey, guys! So, Google Maps is like, really bad in Krea, so don't use it.
Erybody there knows that Naver Map and Kakaomap are the way to go.
They were only available in Krean for a super long time,
but lucky for you, both got English version updates before the
2018 Winter Olympics in Pee-ong-chang, so yay!
But better brush up on your Krean because
the English versions can have some issues from time to time,
but anyway, they're still so much cooler than stinky Google Maps.
Okay, see you guys, saranghae!
*snoring*
*startles*
Woah...
Now, did South Korea put its map data restrictions in place simply to give its own map companies a huge advantage?
Probably not.
But despite Google running by far the most popular map service on this planet, Naver and Kakao own their domestic map market,
thanks to South Korea's map data policy.
Why is this other US tech giant map service baby not getting the same treatment as Google?
Well...
it's Bing, isn't it?
But before you unroll your banners and declare
this an absolute victory for the righteous local underdogs,
consider that Naver, beside a map service, also runs South Korea's biggest search engine,
a Q&A platform (Knowledge iN), a messenger app (LINE), a photo and video messenger app (Snow),
a group chat app (band) an online comic platform (Webtoon) and many things more,
while Kakao runs a search engine (Daum), a messenger
app (KakaoTalk), a transportation app (KakaoT), a media company (KakaoM),
a social media platform (KakaoStory), an online comic platform (KakaoPage), an online
banking service (KakaoBank) and on goes the list.
Both companies have multiple billion US dollar
revenues and dominate South Korea's mobile app sector.
So when it comes to map services in South Korea,
it seems the foreign giant has been shut out for the sake of domestic ones.