Last updated 30 August 2026. This describes what Seoul Tourism Guide (seoultourism.org) actually does today, not what a template says a website might do. Where something is planned but not yet live, it is marked as such.
The short version
You can read every guide on this site without giving us anything. We don’t run a newsletter, we don’t have accounts, and we don’t ask you to log in. The only time you hand us personal information is if you choose to fill in the contact form. In the background, an anonymised analytics measurement tells us which guides get read; that is the extent of it.
Who is responsible
Seoul Tourism Guide is an independent publisher and is the data controller for this site. Contact us about anything on this page through the contact form, selecting “Something else” and saying it’s a privacy request.
What we collect when you just read
Server logs
This site is hosted by DreamHost. Like every web host, their servers record standard access logs — IP address, timestamp, the URL requested, the referring page, and browser user agent. These exist so the site can be kept running and abuse investigated. We do not use them to build profiles of readers, and they are retained on the host’s normal rolling schedule.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics 4, added through the Google Site Kit plugin, with the measurement ID G-RCY457NRYF. It tells us which guides people read, roughly where in the world they are (country and city level), and how they found us. IP addresses are truncated by Google before storage; we cannot see individual readers, and we have not enabled Google Signals or any advertising-personalisation feature on the property. Analytics is disabled entirely for logged-in users of the site.
Google acts as our processor for this. Their handling of the data is covered by the Google Privacy Policy. If you would rather not be measured at all, Google publishes a browser opt-out add-on, and any browser tracking-protection setting will also block it.
Caching and images
Pages are cached and images compressed by plugins running on our own server. Neither sends anything about you anywhere. All images and scripts on the site are served from seoultourism.org itself, with the single exception of the Google Analytics tag described above.
Cookies
A plain visit to this site sets no cookies from us. The Google Analytics tag sets its own measurement cookies (the _ga family, typically expiring after two years) to tell repeat visits apart. Clearing your browser’s cookies removes them, and blocking third-party or analytics cookies in your browser prevents them being set.
There is currently no consent banner on this site, because at present we set no advertising or profiling cookies. Before any advertising is introduced, a Google-certified consent management platform will be in place so that visitors in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland are asked for consent before any advertising or personalisation cookie is set, and this page will be updated to describe it.
Advertising
This site does not currently display advertising. We intend to serve ads through Google AdSense. When that happens, Google and its partners will use cookies and similar identifiers to serve and measure ads, and in some regions to personalise them based on your prior visits to this and other sites. Readers will be able to control this at Google Ads Settings, and opt out of personalised advertising from participating vendors at optout.aboutads.info. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s previous visits to this website. This page will be updated with the specifics on the day ads go live.
The contact form
If you use the contact form, we receive the name, email address, category, optional page URL and message you type into it. That submission is emailed to us and stored in the email account that receives it; it is used to answer you and, where you have sent a correction, to fix the guide. It is not added to a mailing list, not used for marketing, and not shared with anyone. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in answering people who write to us. We keep correction correspondence while it is useful for maintaining the guide it relates to, and delete general enquiries once they are resolved.
Comments
Comments are closed across this site and no comment form is displayed on any page. Historic unpublished comment submissions have been deleted from our database. If you want to respond to a guide, use the contact form.
Links to other sites
Our guides link out to official sources — Seoul Metropolitan Government, Korea Tourism Organization, Seoul Metro, temple stay and ticketing operators, and similar. Once you follow one of those links you are on someone else’s site under someone else’s privacy policy, several of which are Korean-language and Korean-law. We have no control over and take no responsibility for what those sites do with your data.
International transfers
Our host and our analytics provider are both United States companies and data described here may be processed there. Google relies on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses for transfers out of the EEA and UK.
Your rights
Depending on where you live — this covers readers under the UK GDPR and EU GDPR, and California residents under the CCPA and CPRA — you may have the right to ask what personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to object to or restrict processing, and to receive a copy in a portable format. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under California law, and we do not use it for cross-context behavioural advertising.
In practice, the only personal data we are likely to hold about any individual reader is a contact form message. Ask through the contact form and we will act on it within 30 days. If you are in the EEA or UK and are unhappy with how we handle a request, you can complain to your national data protection authority.
Children
This is a travel-planning site written for adults planning trips. It is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has sent us something through the contact form, tell us and we will delete it.
Changes
When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. The two changes we already expect are the introduction of advertising and of a consent management platform; both will be reflected here at the point they go live, not before.