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One netizen made the discovery a few days ago. I wonder if Google Maps has similarly failed to keep things family friendly.
Controversy has arisen over it being discovered that the "Roadview" feature of a domestic portal site, allowing users to see 360-degree views of streets, reveals the red light district of Shinsegye Street. Yang Yeong-ja, who writes the blog Dadaikseok, wrote on the 14th that the Roadview feature reveals the road currently famous for being dense with brothels. "I was using Roadview... wanted to see the Yeongdeung-po area... a few of the girls were waiting around for customers." The photos discovered by Mr. Yang shows the condemned area behind the Shinsegye Department Store in Yeongdeung-po. But the pictures also show a portion of the area has female prostitutes in tank tops and bikinis waiting for customers between glass doors in what is clearly a red light district. Within the photos there are notations and arrows saying "Shinsegye Street" so that people unaware of the area who search for it using Roadview can easily understand the location they view, meaning they are being directed to and informed about a brothel district. On seeing this one netizen wrote, "they couldn't possibly have failed to notice that the prostitutes were just standing around like always when the pictures were taken... This could have bad effect on teenagers who see this kind of scene when searching in Roadview, so in the future the people running the site should be more careful about things like this."
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and all this time i though korea was hooker free...
I'm curious if it's a powerful sense of cultural denial or willful deception for this guy to even pose the "this will damage teenagers" thing with a straight face. Considering there's a whole street of these places sandwiched between Yongsan Station/I-Park Mall and the main road, I can't imagine there's a teenager in the city who doesn't know where they can pay for sex if that's really what they're looking for.
Nothing beats free advertising!
You can see the Yongsan ones too, but can't remember if there are actually people in them. I'd check, but I am at work.
LoL, I saw my car at Google map road view. This is clear violation of privacy.
google maps doesn't have street view for korea, but i'm sure they have a mechanism of automatically detecting and censoring such content. they can automatically detect and blur license plates, for example, so i'm sure a clever developer working for google has developed software to look for breasts in their images and flag them for review/editing. also, google maps runs a pretty good complaint response system, so anyone that wants their face blurred or certain personal information taken away can have that done.
This is absolutely hilarious. Oh, and any kid who looks like they are under nineteen will be forcibly removed beyond the painted line that clearly demarcates the 24-hour, adults-only entertainment district, at least in Yongsan. That's my 'hood. Since my apartment is being rented out, I spent all of summer 2007 in an officetel half a click up the block from there. I've never been to red-light districts anywhere else, but I have been to Hollywood Boulevard in L.A. and Harbor Boulevard in OC, and South Koreans should be proud of the orderly, well-lit, and crime-free nature of the red-light districts.
crazy
yeah, wow. seeing a picture of a prostitute just standing there, minding her own business can have a bad effect on teenagers...
In a desperate attempt to spark up a heated debate, I once suggested to a classroom full of twenty-something Korean women that all Korean men cheat on their wives. Their unanimous response was a resounding "yes, it is true". I suspect that this cultural reality is probably also the fault of Google Maps. |
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