.NET Core configuration URL ampersand encoding

I have a URL that I'd like to keep in appsettings.json :

"MapLookupURL": "https://www.google.com/maps/search/?api=1&query=",

I then retrieve this string via:

window.open("@(Configuration.MapLookupURL)" + 

The problem is .NET is encoding the string (including the ampersand in "&query=") thus rendering everything from the ampersand on useless.

How do I stop .NET from doing this?

Please try window.open("@(Html.Raw(_config["MapLookupURL"]))" + "Seoul");.

Here's my test reult with codes below:

@using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration
@inject IConfiguration _config
@{
    ViewData["Title"] = "Home Page";
}

<div class="text-center">
    <h1 class="display-4">Welcome</h1>
    <p>Learn about <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/aspnet/core">building Web apps with ASP.NET Core</a>.</p>
</div>

<button id="btn1">click to search</button>
<div id="cont1">@_config["MapLookupURL"]</div>

@section Scripts{
    <script>
        $("#btn1").click(function () {
            var a = @_config["MapLookupURL"];
            var b = "@Html.Raw(_config["MapLookupURL"])";
            console.info(a);
            window.open("https://www.google.com/maps/search/?api=1&query=" + "Seoul");
            // window.open("@_config["MapLookupURL"]" + "Seoul");
        })
    </script>
}

You will see that when the page loads, it already converts the asp.net core vaiable in js into plain html content. In the meantime, Razor automatically HTML-encodes any string output to prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. That's why we could see <div id="cont1">@_config["MapLookupURL"]</div> showed well(browser could show the encodes directly) but in <script> it doesn't. The workaround is using @Html.Raw(_config["MapLookupURL"]) which outputs the raw, unencoded string.