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Google Asks S. Korea to Allow Overseas Transfer of High-Precision Map Data

Written: 2025-02-28 18:23:11Updated: 2025-02-28 19:10:06

Google Asks S. Korea to Allow Overseas Transfer of High-Precision Map Data

Photo : YONHAP News

Google has asked the South Korean government to permit the overseas transfer of the country’s high-precision map data, nine years after Seoul turned down its previous request.

According to the land ministry and the National Geographic Information Institute on Friday, the U.S. tech giant applied for permission to transfer one-to-five-thousand-scale high-precision map data to its overseas data center.

Google currently offers South Korean maps using publicly available lower-resolution one-to-two-thousand-500-scale map data, combined with aerial and satellite imagery.

Seoul refused similar requests from Google in 2007 and 2016, citing the need to protect the country’s security facilities, including its military bases.

In 2016, Seoul put forth a precondition requiring Google to blur out sensitive sites or host the data on domestic servers, but Google rejected that proposal.

In its latest request, the tech giant said it would comply with the blurring and has requested coordinate data for security facilities, sparking further concerns within the government.

The government is set to conduct an internal review and begin deliberations.

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