Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 25, 2026

What the Korea (“we”, “our”) is operated by an independent publisher in Seoul, Republic of Korea, using the publishing name “What the Korea Editorial Team.” This policy explains what information is processed when you use https://www.whatthekorea.com, why it is processed, which services receive it, and the choices available to you.

Information and technologies we use

  • Hosting and security — our hosting and content-delivery providers may process request information such as your IP address, date and time, requested URL, browser or device information, referrer, and security signals to deliver and protect the site.
  • Analytics — when enabled, Google Analytics 4 helps us understand page visits, traffic sources, approximate location, device and browser categories, and interactions. Google may use cookies, local storage, IP addresses, or other identifiers according to our configuration, your region, and your consent choices. Analytics is kept off unless the production consent configuration has been verified.
  • Advertising — Google AdSense code is present on publisher-content pages for site verification and, when advertising is enabled, ad delivery and measurement. Google and other advertising vendors may place or read cookies in your browser or use web beacons, IP addresses, and other identifiers to collect, share, and use information as a result of ad serving. Personalized advertising depends on applicable law, account settings, and consent.
  • Article views and likes — Supabase stores aggregate counters keyed to an article slug. A normal network request also exposes technical request data such as an IP address to the service provider. We use session storage to avoid incrementing a view more than once per browser session and local storage to remember whether that browser marked an article as liked. These features do not require an account.
  • Site preferences — local storage may remember a home-page presentation choice so that the interface remains consistent on a later visit.
  • Email — if you contact us, we receive the address, message, and any information you choose to include so we can reply, investigate a correction, or handle the request.

Service providers and external links

We use Vercel for hosting, Google for analytics and advertising, and Supabase for aggregate article-interaction counters and image storage. These providers may process information in countries other than your own under their respective terms and privacy safeguards. If you follow an external or affiliate link, the destination service—such as eBay—processes the visit under its own privacy policy.

For a direct explanation of Google's processing, read How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services. Affiliate relationships are explained separately in our Affiliate Disclosure.

Your choices

  • Use your browser settings to block or delete cookies, local storage, and session storage. Core reading remains available, although analytics, advertising, likes, or saved preferences may not work as intended.
  • Manage Google ad personalization in Google Ads Settings and review industry opt-out choices at YourAdChoices.
  • A Google-certified European regulations consent message is published for this site for users in the EEA, United Kingdom, and Switzerland (verified August 25, 2026). It manages advertising consent choices. Its optional Consent Mode connection to Google Analytics is not currently enabled, so this site keeps Analytics disabled rather than treating an ad consent choice as analytics consent.

Retention

Session-storage view markers normally expire when the browser session ends. Local-storage preferences remain until you clear them or the site removes them. Aggregate article counts may be retained until they are manually deleted. Provider logs and analytics data follow the retention settings and legal obligations of the relevant service. We keep correspondence only as long as reasonably needed to respond, maintain an editorial record, resolve a dispute, or meet a legal obligation.

Access, deletion, and questions

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to request access, correction, deletion, restriction, or objection concerning personal information we control. Because article view and like counters are not tied to a user account, we may be unable to associate an aggregate count with a particular person. Send privacy questions or requests to contact@whatthekorea.com and include enough detail for us to identify the relevant interaction without sending unnecessary sensitive information.

Changes to this policy

We update this page when our services or practices materially change. The date at the top records the latest revision.