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Comment by phendrenad2 | Hacker News Reader

This isn't really the best reporting on the situation.

Here's the deal:

Google Maps currently doesn't work well in South Korea. That's because the SK government has refused to give Google access to their official map data, because of "security concerns". They apparently had no problem giving map data to local SK companies, however, so essentially those companies had an unfair advantage.

While negotiating tariffs, it seems like Google was able to slip into the talks and cut a deal with the SK government to get the data. I guess a minor detail of the deal is that certain things will be blurred? I assume military bases?

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Quote 1:

> That is because South Korean laws require that companies store core geospatial data locally, something Google has long refused to do.

Quote 2:

> That's because the SK government has refused to give Google access to their official map data, because of "security concerns".

Quote 3:

> Google said Tuesday it will accept the South Korean government's security requirements to remove coordinates for the Korean region from its map in order to secure approval to export high-precision map data overseas.

(via https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/tech-science/20250909/...)

(Quote 1) from the article is my prior understanding of the situation. Your claim (Quote 2) doesn't match my prior understanding either. I did some googling, and found additional reporting (Quote 3), which seems to be more precise and accurately contextualized than (Quote 1).

I am personally quite sympathetic to the posture of KR's government, regarding data sovereignty of high-precision map data. I understand that Google and other tech companies were always legally able to serve maps of SK of comparable quality from a datacenter in SK.

I assume if you really want this data for military purposes, you have enough budget to do something beyond free Google maps output. There are many commercial providers who are already taking pictures of the globe.

> I assume if you really want this data for military purposes

Typically we are using NGA 1m DTED for the terrain elevation data but I don't recall off the top of my head who usually supplies the imagery layers. We'll pull multiple map types from a WMS Server, including raster maps like FAA VFR mapsheets for our Area of Operations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTED

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Map_Service

https://www.beautifulpublicdata.com/faa-aviation-maps/

This reminds me SK making Twitch to pay for user's traffic while local competitors dont have to. I wonder why other countries dont retaliate.

Retaliate for... what? The whole point of "countries" is that other countries don't get to tell them how to run their country, unless there is a legally binding consortium agreement. If SK wants to make it hard or impossible for foreign countries to compete, that's literally up to them. It's their country. They make the rules.

And other countries make their own rules, which can include retaliation.

If other countries give market access to Korean companies, then as a member of the WTO, South Korea's non-reciprocity comes with significant penalties.

This isn't about nimble startups being protected against Google and Apple. It's Naver, Samsung and Kakao Corporations. They sometimes exercise vast power over government and so such decisions are less democratic than oligarchic.

Let's remember that all this protectionism ends up costing consumers. UX design in Korean apps alone sucks so hard, and there's monopolistic pricing for lots of services. Consumers could benefit from alternatives.

You do realize that a country like the US does the same in many ways, just less on the nose - until 2 years ago that is, now doing even more blatantly than SK? And most of the countries in the world put up all sorts of visible and invisble barriers?

because of "security concerns".

If your next-door neighbor had 50 nuclear weapons, and threatened to use them on you almost daily, you probably wouldn't use the dismissive scare quotes.

I don't think North Korea is hindered by the lack of Google Maps. Their only real target, Seoul, has a very known location.

> I guess a minor detail of the deal is that certain things will be blurred? I assume military bases?

That can't be the case — blurry billboards saying essentially, "Nothing to see here!"

> They apparently had no problem giving map data to local SK companies, however, so essentially those companies had an unfair advantage.

I don't suppose having GMaps installed by default on Android and having the backing of nation government that can bend entire countries to its whims are considered unfair advantages for Google ?

Maybe, maybe not. But it makes a lot of sense as for why it was discussed in the context of tariff negotiations. Tariffs are also an "unfair advantage" and letting American companies compete on mapping is likely to be part of the deal.

But a trade agreement doesn't mean that Google will get to disregard South Korean national security rules, so, blurring.

blurry everything.

That's effectively what Israel has. America forces a maximum satellite resolution on any commercial providers that want to play ball with .gov buyers (which is all of them, since .gov is a huge customer of commercial imagery).

How about a better solution, which is to provide equal access to everyone, be they some local company, OSM, Google, Bing or whoever?

And its not a "security issue". Only way that would be true is if they have a countrywide tarp across the country. /sarcasm

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