Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 2026

This is a small, independently run site about Korean culture. This page tells you exactly what happens when you visit — including the parts that involve other companies. It was rewritten in August 2026 after we measured the site’s actual network requests and found the previous version was out of date.

What we collect ourselves

  • Aggregate page views — via Burst Statistics, which runs on our own server. No personal data, no tracking cookies.
  • Comments — if you leave one, your name, email and message are stored.
  • Contact messages — if you email us, your message lands in our inbox.

Other companies your browser contacts

Loading a page here also makes your browser talk to a few outside services. This is the honest, measured list:

  • Google Analytics (via Google Site Kit) — measures how many people visit and which articles they read. This does set cookies and it does track visits across pages. It is the one genuine tracker on this site.
  • Google Fonts — the two typefaces the site is set in are served by Google. No cookies, but Google sees your IP address when the fonts load.
  • YouTube — on articles containing video, only the still thumbnail image loads from YouTube’s image server. The video player itself is not loaded until you press play, and when it does, it uses YouTube’s no-cookie domain. Before you press play, YouTube sets nothing.
  • NAVER Maps — the “Explore Korea” section on the front page ends with one interactive map of all ten places. It is not loaded until you scroll down to it, so if you never reach that part of the page, NAVER is never contacted. When it does load, NAVER sees your IP address and may set cookies. We use a Korean map service because every place on this site is in Korea, and Korean maps are simply more accurate there.
  • Unsplash — some photographs are served from Unsplash rather than copied to our server.
  • Cafe24 — our hosting provider, in Korea. They handle the server itself.

The tools on the Tools page are a deliberate exception: every one of them runs entirely inside your browser. Nothing you type into them — a word, a birthday, a sentence — is sent anywhere, stored, or seen by us.

The small maps inside each place card are a deliberate exception. Those are plain images stored on our own server, not live maps — opening one contacts nobody. Only the single large map at the end of “Explore Korea” is a live NAVER map, and only once you scroll to it. Map data © NAVER Corp.

Advertising

There is no advertising on the site today. We intend to add Google AdSense once there are enough articles to qualify. When that happens, this page will be updated before the ads appear, and a cookie consent notice will be shown.

Cookies

Two kinds are in use: the essential ones WordPress needs to work (for example, remembering you if you have commented), and Google Analytics cookies as described above. There are no advertising cookies at present.

Your rights (GDPR / CCPA)

You can ask us to show you what data we hold about you, delete it, or correct anything that is wrong. Email hello@tesign.com and we will handle it. You can also opt out of Google Analytics entirely using Google’s own browser add-on.

Who runs this site

Why Korean is published by tesign, an independent publisher based in South Korea. For anything on this page, write to hello@tesign.com.