How we decide what to publish발행 기준 · 編集方針 · 编辑标准

Welcl Buddyis a travel-editorial magazine about Korea, Japan, and China, written for foreigners. Articles are drafted with AI assistance and published on a daily cadence; a human editor reviews published articles on a rolling basis, correcting with dated notes. This page explains every step of that process — what we use AI for, what we don't, how we source facts, and how we correct mistakes when we make them.

What we publish

Travel-editorial articles in six categories per country: Culture, Food & Cafes, Practical Tips, Itineraries, Hidden Gems, and Pop Culture & Filming Locations. We write for foreign travelers with real trip intent in the next one to six months. We do not write breaking news, political analysis, sports coverage, or celebrity gossip.

We deliberately do not write about contemporary politics, cross-strait or Korea-Japan relations, religious-state controversies, or anniversaries with active political weight. We are a travel-editorial outlet, not a news outlet.

How AI is used in our workflow

Every article begins as a Claude-drafted first version, written against our per-country editorial briefs (tone, angle, topics to avoid, and the list of subjects we have already covered). New articles are published on a daily cadence.

A human editor then reviews published articles on a rolling basis — checking accuracy, tone, and usefulness; replacing cover photographs; tightening native-language terms; and correcting any claim that doesn't hold up, with a dated note on the article. Reader corrections (see below) jump the queue: anything flagged by a reader is reviewed within two business days.

What we use AI for: drafting prose at the magazine's tone, generating category-aware structure, surfacing native-language terms with romanisation, suggesting cover image search queries. AI is a drafting tool inside a closed workflow.

What we do not use AI for: signing articles as if AI were the author, generating photographs of people or places, or producing fabricated bylines. Editorial responsibility for everything published here rests with the human editorial collective.

Sourcing and fact-checking

The drafting brief prohibits invented specifics: the bot is instructed never to state an opening hour, price, or address it cannot ground. In rolling review, specific claims are verified against at least one authoritative source — and corrected with a dated note when they don't hold. Our preferred sources by country:

• Korea— Naver Maps, Naver Place, the relevant Korea Tourism Organization page, the proprietor's own listing when one exists.
• Japan— Tabelog for restaurants, the relevant prefecture or city tourism page, the venue's own page when one exists.
• China— Dianping for restaurants, the relevant local tourism page, the venue's WeChat official account when one exists.

Where we recommend a place, we have either been there, sourced from someone who has, or relied on a primary listing from the proprietor or local tourism board. We will not recommend a venue based on AI-generated detail alone.

Native-language terms

Korean, Japanese, and Chinese terms appear in our articles in both native script and romanisation on first use, with a brief gloss. Each term is reviewed against an authoritative dictionary:

• Korean: Naver Korean-English Dictionary (krdict.korean.go.kr).
• Japanese: Jisho.org.
• Chinese: MDBG Chinese-English Dictionary.

The romanisation system follows the most widely-recognised standard per language: Revised Romanisation of Korean, modified Hepburn for Japanese, Hanyu Pinyin (with tone marks in the Phrasebook, without in body text) for Chinese.

Photography and Reels

Cover photographs are either: licensed via Unsplash, contributed by our editorial team, sourced from Wikimedia Commons with attribution, or licensed from named photographers. AI-generated images of real places are not used.

Instagram Reels embedded inside articles are used with the creator's implied or explicit permission. If a creator asks us to remove their embed, we do so within one business day.

Corrections policy

If you find an error — a wrong name, a wrong price, a custom we got backward — please tell us at designloversko@gmail.com. Include the article URL and the specific claim you think is incorrect. If you have a source, even better.

When we correct an article, we add a dated note at the bottom of the piece (we do not quietly edit). Significant factual errors are corrected within two business days; small typos and date adjustments may be batched.

If a place we recommended has closed or changed substantially, we update the article and note the change rather than removing the recommendation silently. The article's history is part of its value.

Editorial responsibility

Editorial responsibility for every article — including those not yet through rolling review — rests with the editorial collective, whose profiles are at /about/editors. The Lead Editor is editorially responsible for the entire site and can be reached at the email above.

AI does not get a byline. AI does not get attributed as an expert. AI is a tool we use inside a workflow that we, the named editors, own and are responsible for.

What this means for advertisers

We run Google AdSense and one first-party promotion (Local Buddy, on Korea articles only, clearly tagged). We do not sell editorial placement. Sponsored content, if and when we run it, is labelled and structurally distinct (separate sections, clear "Sponsored" tags), and our editorial team retains final approval over the tone.

Reaching us

Editor email: designloversko@gmail.com. Response time is usually two business days. Urgent factual errors should be marked URGENT in the subject line.