Why South Korea Censors its Maps

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Great video! Keep it up:)

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/Lumptatorface 📅︎︎ Jul 10 2020 🗫︎ replies
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This video is supported by viewers like you. If you too want to help me make more things  like this, consider supporting me on Patreon. Thank you. 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.
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Channel: Tapakapa
Views: 588,199
Rating: 4.8970785 out of 5
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Length: 10min 48sec (648 seconds)
Published: Fri Jul 10 2020
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