From paper maps to a service that did not fully enter

Among the technologies people now use, the notes write, map information is widely taken up because it is needed and useful. Paper maps gave way to navigation systems, and then, with the smartphone, to maps, route finding, and guidance on the phone. The trend is worldwide. The representative service, they say, is Google Maps, which had been offered for about twenty years and, in 2018, had 150 million users in the United States in a single month — a figure they record for that year, not as a later official total. Apple’s maps are named as well.

Google Maps, as a service used worldwide, tried to enter Korea in the same form. Korea limited the service, they write, for security and for the protection of domestic industry. Interest in spatial information grew, and the matter was raised in international negotiations such as FTAs. The report sets out to confirm the concept and the related technologies, to grasp foreign and domestic industry trends, and, on that basis, to judge the soundness of domestic law and to offer implications.

A ministry definition, a 2013 outlook, a 2019 ranking

Spatial information, after the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport as the notes cite it, is all information on location and distribution, shown on a map, to help everyday life and other situations. Since hunting, cropping, and herding, they add, such information has had basic value. They split it into land spatial information, built on nature and terrain, and urban spatial information, built on urban infrastructure such as roads, water, and electricity. The spatial-information industry is the business of building, managing, and circulating that information. The Google Maps episode, they say, woke a discussion of how such information should be managed and used, and made the government’s role in a growing industry look important.

UN-GGIM, in a 2013 report, said that spatial-information workers would increase steadily over the following five to ten years — an outlook the notes keep in that window. The value of services would rise as spatial information was joined to other technologies, and the government’s role would become more important. The Internet of Things and cloud computing were named as technologies close to the building and use of spatial information. In a May 2019 survey, users were most numerous, in order, on Naver Map, T Map, Google Maps, and Kakao Map. The National Spatial Information Basic Act was enacted for the efficient building and use of a national spatial-information system. The Korea Land and Geospatial Informatix Corporation, they note, has operated from 2014.

Security, an asset gap, and a slower opening

The 2007 export request, in their telling, was refused along three lines. In an armistice, the government saw a security risk in exposing terrain and security facilities through satellite images. It offered review of security facilities and the installation of servers in Korea; Google did not accept. A wide gap in asset size between Google and domestic firms raised worries about fair competition. The WTO, they write, allows an exception to the principle of non-discriminatory trade when domestic industry would be seriously affected. They also point to a structure with no legal entity and so no tax, the difficulty of applying domestic law and of control, and the possibility of a trade dispute. Google, they record, had argued that allowing the export would be a base for future work such as autonomous driving and location-based drones, would raise the competitiveness of domestic firms, and would help tourists and the tourist industry. The refusal, they explain, was decided under the Act on the Construction and Management of Spatial Information and a law on the protection of national spatial information.

Going forward, the notes say the government should grasp firms that have already gone abroad by joining spatial information to information technology, and should support them; should build essential infrastructure so that regional gaps in spatial information do not open; and should not treat a block on multinational entry as more than a temporary expedient, but open the market gradually, as with a screen quota. Overseas and domestic trends should be followed in detail, so that consistent spatial information can be built. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. The notes, a student report on spatial information and the 2007 Google Maps export refusal.

Last updated: 15 November 2026