South Korea approves Google joining the map war

South Korea on Friday approved Google's request to export the country's high-precision map data to overseas servers, a major reversal after two decades of rejection ⁠that clears the way for the U.S. tech giant to enter ​a market dominated by local apps.



The approval was made "on the condition that strict security requirements are met," the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said in a statement.



The conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth.



Google must process map data on locally based servers and is only allowed to export data related to navigation and direction services that have been pre-approved by the government.



The South Korean government also reserves the right to request revisions to maps, and Google must set up a security incident prevention framework to respond to emergency issues.