Naver Map: The App You Install Before You Land in Korea

You land, you open Google Maps, you type your hotel, and it shows you where it is and then refuses to tell you how to walk there.

This surprises almost everyone, and it is not a bug or a bad signal. Korean law has restricted the export of detailed domestic map data, so Google has not held the data it would need to route you on foot or by car inside Korea. Transit directions mostly work. Walking and driving do not.

The fix is one download, and it is worth doing before you get on the plane rather than while standing in an arrivals hall on airport wifi.

This is changing — but not yet

In February 2026 the Korean government approved Google’s request to export high-precision map data, ending a dispute that had run since 2007 and had been refused twice on national-security grounds tied to the unfinished war with the North.

The approval came with conditions rather than a switch being flipped: the data is to be processed on servers inside Korea first, cleared by the government before it leaves, and stripped or blurred where military and other sensitive sites are concerned.

So Google Maps will eventually route you here, and at the time of writing it still does not. If you are reading this on the plane, download Naver Map. If you are reading it much later, check Google first — and then read the rest of this anyway, because the reasons people here keep Naver are not only about turn-by-turn.

Sources: Korea Herald, TechCrunch.

Get it now

Naver Map — 네이버 지도 — is the one most people here use.

• iOS: Naver Map on the App Store
• Android: Naver Map on Google Play

Kakao Map (카카오맵) is the other one, and it is also good. Most people end up with both eventually. Start with Naver — as of early 2026 it had roughly 28 million monthly users in Korea, against about 12 million for Kakao Map and 9 million for Google Maps. It is simply the one the people around you are using.

Set the language first

There is a good chance it is already done. If your phone’s system language is not Korean, the app follows it — so many visitors open it and find it in English without touching anything. If it opens in Korean anyway, the language is a setting inside the app, and it is the first thing to change rather than the thing you discover in week three.

English is not the only option. Naver Map also runs in Chinese and Japanese, which is worth knowing if English is not your first language either.

What comes through in your language

More than the interface, which is the part people assume and then underestimate.

Public transport, including the live parts. Arrival times, alternative routes when the one you wanted is slow, and the boarding and alighting instructions — which bus door, which subway car end, which transfer. Real-time arrivals are the whole value of a transit app in Korea, and they are not held back for Korean speakers.

The subway map itself in English, with first and last train times as well as live arrivals. The last-train time is the one that matters at half past midnight.

Driving directions with English voice guidance. Not just the place names on screen — the voice too, so you can keep your eyes on the road.

The one thing deliberately left in Korean

Turn-by-turn place names in car navigation stay in Korean on purpose. It reads like an oversight and it is the opposite of one: the name the app says is the name painted on the sign you are about to pass. Translate it and you would be comparing an English word against a Korean gantry at 100km/h.

Once you know that is intentional, it becomes useful rather than confusing. Match the shape of the characters, not the meaning.

What else it does better

Walking directions that work, which is the whole reason you are installing it.

Subway exits by number. Large Korean stations have fifteen exits spread over half a kilometre, and coming up the wrong one costs you ten minutes and a road crossing. Naver names the exit, and the exits are numbered on the ground.

Indoor floor plans for large stations, malls and underground shopping streets, which are their own cities down there.

Street-level imagery, useful for checking what a place looks like before you set off to find a door in an alley.

Where it will fight you

Searching in English is unreliable for small places. Chains and landmarks are fine. A neighbourhood restaurant is often listed only under its Korean name, and the romanisation you would guess is not the one in the database.

The way around it is to search the Korean name, and the way to get the Korean name is to copy it from wherever you found the place — a blog, an Instagram post, a friend’s message. Paste, do not retype.

Addresses come in two systems. Korea has road-name addresses (도로명주소) and the older lot-number ones (지번). Both are still in use, and a place will sometimes be findable under one and not the other. If an address fails, try the other format before deciding the place does not exist.

Directions assume you can read the signs at the end. The app will get you to the right building; the sign on the door may still be in Korean only.

Kakao Map, and why people keep both

Kakao Map is the same category of tool with different strengths. Some find its walking directions clearer; its coverage of small businesses is not identical, so a place missing from one is sometimes present in the other.

There is no need to choose on day one. Install Naver, and add Kakao the first time Naver cannot find something — which will happen.

• iOS: Kakao Map on the App Store
• Android: Kakao Map on Google Play

Between the two of them, a place that exists in Korea is findable.

For restaurants, trust Kakao’s ratings

This is the local habit visitors miss, and it is worth installing Kakao for on its own. When you are deciding where to eat, the rating that means something is the one on Kakao Map. A restaurant sitting above four there is very unlikely to disappoint you.

Naver’s are newer and thinner than they look. Star ratings only returned to Naver Map in April 2026, after five years away — they were removed in 2021 because people were using them to punish businesses for no reason — and they have come back deliberately positioned as a secondary indicator alongside the keyword reviews (“친절해요”, “가성비가 좋아요”) rather than as the headline number. They have not had time to accumulate.

There is also a difference in what surrounds them. Naver place pages sit inside a much larger ecosystem of blogs and sponsored posts, which is excellent for depth and less useful when what you want is a quick honest verdict on whether the noodles are any good.

So the full habit is: find it in Google, route to it in Naver, and check what Kakao thinks of it before you commit to dinner.

There is more to Kakao Map than the ratings — roadview that keeps its older captures, and sending a pin straight into a KakaoTalk chat — and it has its own guide.

Google Maps is the next section.

What Google Maps is still for

Keep it. It is still the best thing for finding a place rather than routing to it — searching in English, reading reviews written in English, and saving pins before you arrive.

The workable habit is: search in Google Maps, navigate in Naver Map. Copy the Korean name across when the English search fails.

The Korean part

Maps get you to the door. They do not phone the restaurant to ask whether it is open on a public holiday, explain to a driver where you actually meant, or read a notice taped to a shutter.

That is where we come in. Send us the place, the address, or a screenshot of something you cannot read, and we will tell you in English what it says and call ahead if it needs calling.

For getting around more broadly — cards, fares, transfers — the Seoul transport guide covers the rest, and the subway fare guide covers what it costs.

KakaoTalk is the easiest way to reach us, and WhatsApp works too. Asking costs nothing.