Decision Delayed Three Times This Year
"Clear Export Conditions and Review Standards Needed"
The government has once again postponed its decision regarding Google's request to export high-precision maps of South Korea abroad. With the decision delayed three times this year alone, the verdict on Google's map export request is now expected to be made around February next year. The domestic mapping industry has pointed out that repeated delays are due to loopholes in the current system related to overseas map exports, and has called for clearer export conditions and review standards to prevent similar cases involving companies like Google from recurring.
On the morning of the 11th, the National Geographic Information Institute's Map Export Review Committee under the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced that it had decided to extend the review of Google's application to export 1:5,000 scale high-precision maps by an additional 60 days. This committee is responsible for deliberating and deciding whether to allow the overseas export of map information, and includes officials from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the Ministry of National Defense, the National Intelligence Service, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Unification, the Ministry of Science and ICT, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.
The committee explained that it decided to postpone the review and requested Google to submit supplementary documents. Although Google expressed its willingness to comply with requirements such as masking security facilities and prohibiting the exposure of coordinates at a press conference with the domestic media in September, it had not submitted an additional application including these details to the committee.
The committee resolved that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport should require Google to submit the supplementary application within 60 days, by February 5 next year, and decided to suspend the review until the supplementary documents are received. As a result, the final decision is expected to be made only after February next year. Considering that Google submitted its export request this past February, the process will have taken about a year. Including the latest delay, the government has postponed its decision three times this year.
This is the first time in history that the decision on exporting maps to a foreign company has been postponed three times. Previously, Google applied for map exports in 2007 and 2016, but both requests were denied for security reasons. The previous record for the longest delay was a single extension during the second application.
Initially, both the domestic industry and academia expected that the committee would reject Google's map export request by the current deadline, as key government officials and industry stakeholders expressed negative views on exporting maps to Google. However, the absence of the announcement of the "Joint Fact Sheet," which summarizes the results of Korea-US negotiations on tariffs and security, became a variable affecting the final decision.
The Korean government has set conditions for Google, including masking security facilities, prohibiting the exposure of coordinates, and establishing a domestic data center. However, Google has effectively refused to set up a domestic data center. Previously, ministers from government agencies participating in the committee, such as the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the Ministry of National Defense, stated during the recent National Assembly audit that map exports to Google should not be allowed.
Some interpret the government's repeated postponement as an attempt to avoid provoking the United States while detailed procedures remain after the conclusion of tariff negotiations between the two countries. South Korea's restrictions on exporting high-precision maps have been cited as a representative non-tariff barrier in the National Trade Estimate (NTE) report by the United States Trade Representative (USTR). Google's current export request was submitted in February, at a time when the Trump administration was pressuring countries around the world to remove non-tariff barriers using tariffs as leverage.
The industry argues that the current process of reviewing export requests through the committee must be improved to prevent a recurrence of such situations. The absence of clear export conditions and review standards during the committee's deliberations has led to repeated postponements of export decisions. A representative from the domestic mapping industry stated, "Because the relevant regulations themselves are inadequate, the committee has once again decided to postpone the review," adding, "The government must have realized through this incident that the map export regulations are insufficient."
There are also recommendations to clearly stipulate the requirements for exporting high-precision maps abroad in the law. As global big tech companies are expected to continue requesting the export of high-precision maps following Google's application, this issue is gaining importance. In fact, Apple also submitted a request to the Korean government in June to export 1:5,000 scale high-precision maps, while the review of Google's application was still underway.
The National Assembly Research Service, in a report published on the 2nd of this month, stated, "It is necessary to consider specifying the criteria for granting permission to export (maps) abroad in the law," and diagnosed that "key issues such as blurring national security facilities, deleting coordinates, and building domestic servers should be established as permission criteria in the Spatial Information Management Act and its subordinate statutes." The research service also suggested that, given the importance of the map export review, the positions of committee members should be raised from the current director level to vice-ministerial level.
The National Assembly has also begun preparing legislation related to map exports. Ahn Gyu-baek, the current Minister of National Defense and a sitting member of the National Assembly, proposed an amendment to the Spatial Information Management Act in June, before taking office as minister. The amendment would limit the scale of maps that can be exported abroad to 1:25,000 or less, and require the establishment of domestic data centers and security measures for the export of more detailed map data.
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