Apple's 'Find' Service Unavailable in South Korea, Users Protest

TapTechNews July 26th news, Apple provides the 'Find' service globally to facilitate users to retrieve their devices after they are lost, but this service is not available in South Korea. According to SBS TV's report on the 23rd, in South Korea, when users try to use the 'Find My iPhone' function, they will only see a blank screen.

Not only that, on iPhones sold in South Korea, if users open the 'Find' function, the 'Contacts' option will briefly appear and then disappear instantly, and users cannot share each other's locations with family and friends who use Apple products. Moreover, even if users are overseas, these iPhones sold in South Korea cannot use functions such as finding and location sharing.

A Korean named Yoo Byung-gyu (transliterated) in Basel, Switzerland, said that the 'Find' function is completely unusable, and the interface shows 'Not available'. When he tried to send his location in Switzerland, he found that his phone mandatorily blocked this function.

Local users initially guessed whether this problem was caused by map data export restrictions, location information law and other local regulations, but after SBS asked the Korea Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission and other departments, the answer was 'there are no relevant laws or policies that limit Apple's services'. Some users launched a 'one-person demonstration' due to asking Apple to explain the reason and submitted a national consent petition to the National Assembly. In Apple's silence, the national petition requesting an investigation into the cause of'service discrimination' received more than 1200 signatures of support in one day.

TapTechNews learned that despite this, South Korea is still selling AirTags trackers that rely on the 'Find' function, and Apple has not publicly responded why such restrictions are imposed on local users.