What’s the best Map app in Korea?

This is relatively a long article, so here is the summary of it.

Naver map — perfect translation, much of information

Kakao map — useful features, but need some improvement on translation quality

Google maps — nothing more or less than your expectation, but need more localization

Map apps are necessary. Whether you are local or not, you are in hometown or traveling, Maps are just necessary.

So I thought it would be nice if I could give you a small tip which map apps are good, and the candidates are below four(Actually three). Naver map, Google maps, Kakao Map, Apple Maps. Even though its great map quality, Apple maps are not very popular in Korea because it does not have much local information. I have used it for a little bit, I really liked the design and user interface, but I found myself losing interest on it because there’s just not enough information.

So, let’s have a look around four map apps in Korea.

Kakao Maps

On the map screen, it looks quite nice and clean. I tested this in Myeondong area which is very popular for travelers. I found that Starbucks are everywhere near here and it shows only English(my system language is English) which looks quite nice.

But when you turn on navigation, it gets little ugly because the app is not fully translated and suddenly Korean words come up on the screen. Take a look at the icons, it says ‘출발’ on the blue icon and it means ‘start’ and the red one says ‘도착’ that’s for ‘destination’. I think it’s pretty basic word for a map but they did not translate them properly, and I think it means they didn’t put a lot of effort on this map for an English version.

Kakao map has an interesting feature ‘Discover’, below on the first map screen. When you click it, it shows the weather, restaurants, local search results, attractions, movies(movie theaters) and even information of local festivals. Which is very cool but it still needs more translations. All the name of the places are not translated(But at least they have images), I guess it’s all just gathered information from their database. If you read Korean, I guess this is quite nice feature to look around the place and plan the route.

But I searched Seorae town(which is pretty famous town for many delicious restaurants) on Kakao map, but there is no search result for that. Well, this is why I use Naver Map.

Naver Maps

Naver map is one of my favorite. Because it’s well designed, easy to use, lots of information gathered from their database. Naver is like a local Google in Korea, the biggest internet portal site and most of the people use it everyday it’s like a gateway for people access news, local information, blogs. More users = more information and more credibility, right? I personally don’t really like the idea that one company or organization own too much information, but on the other hand it is sometimes convenient when we need it.

It shows Korean and English at the same time. WHY?!?!

When you want to find the route to somewhere, Naver map is the best way to do it. Perfect English translation, and very intuitive interface. Let’s take a look at the screen below. Naver map and Kakao map are showing the real time of public transportation information but Naver shows it more easily and you could have better understanding of your journey to the destination. In this case it would take you 26 minutes by two buses and you will walk 3 minutes to the station, 2 minutes on 261, 9 minutes on 143 and 9 minutes walk to the destination, including 3 minutes of waiting. How precise!

Google Maps

I don’t think I need to explain about the features of the Google maps, cause Google maps might be the most popular app on the planet earth. However I believe that is slightly different in Korea. I have to admit that I cannot live without Google maps when I go abroad. But with the same reason, I never really use Google maps in Korea. I would hesitate to answer if you ask me why I do not use this that much, but that is just true. I guess it’s just the difference of local information.

I heard many people told me that is very hard to navigate around the town in Korea, hope this article could be a little help for you.