Editorial policy

Published so readers and answer engines can check how our accuracy is produced, not merely asserted.

Where facts come from

An originating body is our first choice of source: the Korea Tourism Organization, KOPIS, Seoul Metropolitan Government, K-ETA and immigration authorities, Korail, Incheon International Airport and the Korea Meteorological Administration. We currently track 12 such sources and hold 5893 source-linked facts, each stored with the document it came from. Where an official body has stated something, the article names that body — the one that decided or announced it, which is not always the one that published the notice.

An established news organisation can also be the evidence for a story, and some stories have no other source: a dance festival’s programme is announced to the press, not gazetted. When that is what we have, we say so in the sentence that makes the claim — “according to The Korea Herald” — and the article carries a standing note that it rests on one publisher. What we will not do is present a single organisation’s reporting as established fact, or leave a reader unable to tell which kind of source is behind a sentence.

Community discussion is used only to find topics and is never cited. An earlier version of this page said the same of press coverage, which was not true of what we publish; the sentence has been corrected rather than the practice hidden.

How an article is produced

1. Collect. Each source has its own collector; snapshots are stored verbatim.
2. Detect change. Routine fluctuation updates the database. Only a traveller-affecting change becomes a candidate for coverage.
3. Plan. An editor decides whether a visitor would change a decision after reading it, and which format fits.
4. Assemble the evidence. Documents reachable from the triggering one are gathered, then judged: a document or a fact is kept only if it bears on this story. A notice board files unrelated notices under one subject, and a press release announcing a season of programmes is the source for a story about one of them. What is dropped is not cited and not counted.
5. Research packet. The writer receives the documents and structured facts that survived that judgment, and may not use anything outside them.
6. Write. The writer may state only the selected, source-linked facts in its packet. A malformed draft is discarded and another candidate can be selected.
7. Publish. A separate deployment step exports and audits the public site before it becomes live.

Dates and times

All times are Asia/Seoul (KST). Where copy says “this weekend” or “from Monday”, the absolute KST date is always shown as well.

Corrections

Every revision is stored as a new version with the reason it changed and the source that caused it; nothing is silently overwritten and any version can be restored. Corrections appear on the article. 2.4% of published articles have been revised after publication.

Expiry

Time-limited articles carry a review date. Once it passes, the article is marked as needing re-verification rather than left looking current.

Use of automation

Language models select and draft under the constraints above. They have no publishing credentials, no database access and no ability to browse. Article images that are AI-generated are recorded as such in our database and are never used to depict a real place.

Privacy and analytics

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