By Moon Joon-hyun
Publication Date: 2026-02-12 15:34:00
19-year impasse reflects infrastructure costs, not government resistance
For 19 years, Google has been asking South Korea for permission to take the country’s detailed 1:5000 map data overseas. For 19 years, Seoul has said no. The conventional explanation is national security: Korea is technically still at war, and precise maps in foreign hands pose a risk.
But last week, Google submitted a revised proposal that effectively undermined that narrative. It now meets virtually every security condition the government had set.
The one thing it refused to include was a plan to build a data center in Korea.
For Yoo Ki-yoon, former director of the National Geographic Information Institute, the government agency that produces Korea’s base maps,…