Privacy Policy

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 on the site are served from seoultourism.org itself. Two third-party scripts run here: the Google Analytics tag described above, and the Travelpayouts booking-link script described under “Booking links and commission” below.

Cookies

A plain visit to this site sets no cookies from us beyond the two that remember your cookie choice and the country it applies to, which the cookie policy lists. The Google Analytics tag sets its own measurement cookies (the _ga family, typically expiring after two years) to tell repeat visits apart, and the Travelpayouts booking-link script sets a session cookie of its own, described under “Booking links and commission” below. Clearing your browser’s cookies removes them, and the cookie settings described below decide whether either script runs at all.

This site runs a consent banner, and both the Google Analytics tag and the Travelpayouts booking-link script described below are loaded through it. You can change what you allow at any time through the “Cookie settings” link in the footer, and our cookie policy lists what each service sets. Should advertising be introduced later, this page will be updated to describe it before that happens.

What runs before you choose, and how to change it

What runs before you choose depends on where you are reading from, because the law does. In the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, and in Brazil, Chile, China, Israel, Nigeria, South Korea, Thailand, Türkiye and Vietnam, nothing beyond the strictly necessary runs until you answer the dialog on your first visit — not analytics, not Travelpayouts — and Reject all sits on that first screen next to Accept all, not behind a second click.

In the United States you are shown a bar rather than a dialog, and it is not only a notice. Analytics starts on arrival there, but advertising and booking-partner scripts stay switched off until you answer it. In Switzerland you get the dialog too, but analytics starts on arrival there and only advertising and booking-partner scripts wait for your answer. In Canada, and in the countries where notice is enough — among them Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, India and Mexico — everything described on this page starts when you arrive; the notice tells you so, and the same control switches it off. Everywhere else, and whenever we cannot tell where you are, the strictest setting applies: nothing beyond the necessary runs until you answer.

Your answer is kept on your own device, in a first-party cookie called cookie_consent_1a85de that only this site can read, so you are not asked again on every page. It lasts about a year. The Cookie settings link in the footer of every page reopens the choice, and withdrawing is the same two clicks as agreeing: what you switch off stops running, and if that includes analytics, the Google Analytics cookies are cleared. The one cookie Travelpayouts keeps on this site, am_user_session, is no longer renewed once its script stops and lapses within half an hour; anything Travelpayouts or a booking site set on their own domains is cleared in your browser rather than from here.

Refusing costs you nothing. Every guide here is readable in full either way, nothing is paywalled, and no part of Seoul Tourism Guide is held back from readers who say no.

If you are reading this in the United States

Several US states give you the right to opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information, and those words are broader than they sound: letting an advertising or affiliate partner receive information about your visit can count as sharing even though no money changes hands for your data and we have never sold anything of the kind. Rather than argue the definition, Seoul Tourism Guide treats it as covered.

So the bar shown to US readers carries a Do not sell or share button, and for US readers the Cookie settings link at the foot of every page reads Do not sell or share my personal information. Using it stops the advertising category, which is where Travelpayouts and any ad partner sit. Travelpayouts stops running from that point; the session cookie it kept on this site lapses within half an hour, and anything it set on its own domains is cleared in your browser rather than from here.

This site also honours Global Privacy Control. If your browser or an extension sends a GPC signal, it is treated as a valid opt-out on arrival — you do not have to find the control and click it as well, and we do not ask again on later visits. Do Not Track is a different and long-abandoned signal, and to be straight about it: this site does not act on DNT, because nothing agreed what it ought to mean.

The record kept of your choice

Proving that a choice was offered and honoured means keeping a record of it. Each answer is logged with the date and time, the two-letter country the choice was made from, which of the rule sets above applied, a reference to the exact wording you were shown, and the choice itself, against a random identifier generated for your browser.

That record contains no name, no email address and no IP address. It holds a salted hash of your browser’s user-agent string, and the salt changes every day, so two visits on different days cannot be linked back together through it. Records are deleted after 26 months. If you want to see or delete the entries tied to your browser, ask through the contact form.

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.

Booking links and commission

Some links on this site earn a commission. Seoul Tourism Guide works with Travelpayouts, an affiliate network that connects the site to hotel, flight, transfer and activity booking companies. We do not paste tagged links into the guides: Travelpayouts runs a script that turns ordinary links to booking and travel sites into commission-tracking ones as the page loads, and it can add booking boxes and suggestions of its own. If you book after following one of those links, the booking company pays us a commission out of its own margin, and your price is the same either way. Every guide says so at the top, and the affiliate disclosure sets out the arrangement in full.

What that means for your data needs spelling out, because it is more than a cookie notice usually describes. When the script runs it receives your IP address and browser details, as any service your browser connects to does, and it reports to Travelpayouts how the page is used: the page’s address and the one you arrived from, which links you click, how many keys are pressed and in which part of the page (not what is typed), and whether an ad blocker or a private window is in use. Those reports are tied together by a random session identifier kept in a cookie on this site called am_user_session, which lapses 30 minutes after you stop reading, and, if Google Analytics is allowed as well, by the identifier Google Analytics keeps for your browser. The script also fetches typefaces for its booking boxes from Google Fonts, which gives Google your IP address, and keeps a note of the page’s colours in your browser’s local storage so that those boxes match the design.

If you follow one of its links, Travelpayouts and the booking site set identifiers of their own, on their own domains, so that a booking made afterwards can be credited here. We never see your name, your travel dates or your payment details — what comes back is a count of clicks and, sometimes, the fact that a booking happened. Once you are on a booking site you are under its privacy policy, not this one, and Travelpayouts handles what its script collects under its own privacy policy.

The script sits in the Advertising group of this site’s cookie settings and does not load at all until that group is allowed. Refusing it costs you nothing: the links still work, at the same price.

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 personal information. Because our booking partner receives information about your visit, the site treats that as potential “sharing” under California law and offers a Do not sell or share control, described under “If you are reading this in the United States”.

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 change we already expect is the introduction of advertising, which will be reflected here at the point it goes live, not before.