South Korea To Google: Return Our Cities From North Korea

Google Under Fire for Flawed Korea Maps from the Digital Chosunilbo reports Google has labeled some of the regions in South Korea as being part of North Korea. Specifically, the city of Incheon and some islands in Ongjin County such as Baegryeong-do, Daecheong-do, and Socheong-do are labeled to be in North Korea but are actually […]

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Google Under Fire for Flawed Korea Maps from the Digital Chosunilbo reports Google has labeled some of the regions in South Korea as being part of North Korea.

Specifically, the city of Incheon and some islands in Ongjin County such as Baegryeong-do, Daecheong-do, and Socheong-do are labeled to be in North Korea but are actually in South Korea.

I just did a search on Incheon in Google Maps, and it is currently labeling the city as being in South Korea, which is correct. Here is an embeddable Google Map:


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However, Baegryeong-do is labeled as being part of North Korea, which is incorrect:


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Note, the map should update when it is fixed and show South Korea instead of North Korea.

This is far from the first time Google has had issues of mislabeling cities. Remember our piece on Google Agrees To Return Chilean City It Borrowed For Argentina? But I guess this story is a bit more interesting, since it is between North and South Korea.

Google told Digital Chosunilbo that they are updating their maps, but it will take some time to go through the systems and update.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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