How we check facts

Culture writing goes wrong in two ways: stating opinions as facts, and treating one person's experience as true for a whole country. These are the rules we follow to avoid both.

Sources we trust first

• Laws and official notices: the Korea Law Information Center (law.go.kr), ministries and the Korean government's Korea.net.
• Statistics: Statistics Korea (KOSIS) and large published surveys from Gallup Korea, banks and research institutes, always with the year.
• Language: the National Institute of Korean Language (국립국어원) and its Standard Korean Language Dictionary.
• History and culture: the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture (한국민족문화대백과사전), museum and university publications, and books by named scholars.
• News: major Korean and international outlets for recent changes, cited by date.

Rules for every article

• Every number, date, law and historical claim has a source listed at the bottom of the page, with the date we checked it.
• Survey results are described as survey results ("in a 2024 survey of 10,000 workers…"), not as facts about all Koreans.
• We write "many Koreans" or "older generations" rather than "Koreans always". Where a custom is fading, we say so.
• No invented people or personal stories. Example scenes are written in the second person and are illustrations.
• Images come from stock libraries such as Unsplash and Vecteezy and are credited under Sources on each article. Some are AI-generated illustrations, and we label those. Images illustrate the topic and do not show the people discussed.

AI tools

We use AI tools to help with research and first drafts. A person checks every claim against the sources above, rewrites for accuracy and tone, and decides what is published. Anything we cannot verify is cut.

Corrections

If you find an error or think a custom is described unfairly, email hello@unwrittenkorea.com with the page link. We fix confirmed errors quickly and show an "Updated" date on the article.