Maps & navigation: why Google Maps won't work

The problem

South Korea restricts the export of map data, so Google Maps can search businesses but cannot route you anywhere. Every rider hits this on day one. The good news: the Cross-Country Route has a blue line painted on the tarmac the whole way, so you need apps mainly for food, motels, and city sections.

Which app

• Naver Map — best English UI (menus translate; business names stay in Korean). Good bike routing.
• KakaoMap — shows elevation profiles for bike routes; English support thinner than Naver's.
• Komoot — riders report better in-city bike routing than Kakao; works with our GPX files.
• OsmAnd — the offline fallback if you don't read Korean at all.

Show the bike lanes on the map

• Naver Map: tap the layers button and enable the 자전거 (bicycle) layer — dedicated paths and bike lanes get drawn over the base map. Route search also has a bicycle mode with time estimates.
• KakaoMap: same idea — the bicycle layer marks bike paths in color and bike-mode routing shows the elevation profile before you commit.
• The Cross-Country Route itself appears on both apps as a continuous marked path, which is handy for finding your way back after a detour to food or a motel.

Street View: scout before you ride

Both apps include street-level imagery — Kakao calls it Road View, Naver calls it Street View (거리뷰). Drag the little person icon onto a road to preview it. Use it to scout anything you're unsure about: the motel's actual entrance, whether a bridge has a bike lane, or what a construction detour looks like. Korean street imagery covers even small rural roads and is usually fresher than Google's.

Do this before you fly

• Install Naver Map and switch it to English.
• Load our GPX (with stamp-booth waypoints) into Komoot or your GPS unit.
• Download offline maps for the corridor in OsmAnd as a backup — rural sections have dead zones.