On Friday, the South Korean government announced that Google Maps and Google Earth no longer carry latitude and longitude coordinates for the country. The Hindu reported the announcement. Officials call this one of the security conditions of a permit issued in February, which lets Google export high-resolution map data. A joint press release from several agencies adds that Street View images inside and around every military and security site will be deleted.
The report does not say when Google acted, whether any export has started, or what the other conditions are. It gives no number of sites and no date for the Street View deletions. It carries no comment from Google. Officials say they plan to pause or cancel the permit if Google seriously breaks its terms. The report does not say whether developer services are affected.
Coordinates are the number pairs that mark a point on the globe. If the removal reaches developer services, products that read coordinates for Korea could be affected. The report does not say whether it does. For teams that build on one vendor's map layer, the case shows that an export permit can set conditions on product data. They can check which of their features rely on coordinates.