Styling Google Map of South Korea

Question

I have a site where I utilize a styled Google map. If you move the map to South Korea, there are no map features (roads, high ways, places), just named cities and some municipality borders. If I remove styling, all these features return.

It doesn't seem to matter which feature(s) I style, this happens when the first change is applied.

For example, alternate between no styling applied, and styling water as gray.

You can use this page to duplicate the problem with any feature of your choice: http://gmaps-samples-v3.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/styledmaps/wizard/index.html

Is this just a limitation in Google Maps? Something wrong in their data for South Korea? A restriction applied for legal reasons?

Since you can't style a map differently by geographical region (as far as I'm aware), Is my only option to remove all map styling?

Answer 1

I can't speak to the technical side of your question, but I can respond a little to this:

Is this just a limitation in Google Maps? Something wrong in their data for South Korea? A restriction applied for legal reasons?

Yes. Korea has a law on the books, stemming from the 1950s Korean War, that severely restricts the accuracy of mapping data that is allowed to be exported and managed abroad. Simply put, official use of Korean map data is limited to within South Korea's physical borders. Local mapping software companies have no issue with this, as their rendering servers are all located within Korean territory. Google runs afoul of this because their map tiles are all generated in their cloud data centers which of course are all over the world. Therefore Google Maps are functional in Korea, but at a much reduced level of resolution and accuracy compared to the rest of the world (a limitation that local companies don't have to face).

Google has petitioned the government here multiple times about this, but so far the rule remains on the books. My personal feeling is that they are in no rush to update this old wartime rule (which is pretty much useless today since the same local map data is available anywhere there's an internet connection, not to mention it doesn't prevent user provided data like Open StreetMap), because it gives a helpful boost to domestic companies.

Answer 2

I'm suffering with same issue.

It seems like there no 'official' answer where you reported the issue but I found this(Korean) is the only official one. They said, because of legal issue in Korea, they're not able to send map data to out of Korea and it leads the inoperable.

So, I have to make a choice whether not using styled google map, OpenStreetMap, or styled OpenStreetMap at Mapbox.