South Korea demands coordinates removal of its territory by Google Maps & Earth - The News International

The government of South Korea has just issued an update regarding Google Maps, and claims it ‌has removed latitude and longitude coordinates for South Korean territory from Google Maps, and Google ⁠Earth, as part of one of the security conditions it attached to a permit granted earlier in the year, (to export high-resolution map data.)

Moreover, Google Street View imagery inside and ‌around ⁠all military and security facilities on South Korean territory will also have to be deleted, according to an inter-agency press release.

The government said it planned ⁠to suspend or revoke the permit if ⁠serious breaches of the conditions occurred, Reuters claimed. 

What is important to note about this change is that the permission to export map data was added as a feature only in February of this year, and according to AFP, will allow the transfer of this “detailed mapping data of the country” to overseas servers “under certain security requirements.”

The government review that granted this permission also had stipulations in place. They claimed that in order to export 1:5,000-scale, high-precision map data, it had to “implements security safeguards,” such as “limiting transfers to data necessary for navigation services” and “excluding contour lines and other sensitive information.”