Terms of Service
Last updated 6 October 2026
These are the rules for using HereKorea. Creating an account means agreeing to them.
What HereKorea is
A community app for foreign residents of Korea: a feed, private messages, group rooms, a roommate board, a monthly list of things happening in the city, and a handbook of public programmes. It is run as an independent project, not by any government body, and it is not affiliated with any of the institutions it points you to.
Who can use it
- You must be at least 18.
- You must hold a residence card and be willing to have it checked once. An account stays limited until that check passes.
- One account per person. Do not create an account for somebody else.
- Everything you tell us at signup must be true, and the card you photograph must be your own.
Your account
Keep your password to yourself. Anything done from your account is treated as done by you. If you think somebody else has it, change it in Settings — that signs every other device out.
What you post
What you write and photograph stays yours. By posting it here you allow HereKorea to store it and show it to the people it is meant for — publicly for a post, and to the members of a conversation for a message. That permission ends when you delete the content or your account.
There is no tolerance here for objectionable content or for abusing other members. Do not post anything that:
- harasses, threatens, or targets somebody for who they are;
- is sexual content involving minors, or sexual content sent to somebody who did not ask for it. What we forbid, and what happens to an account that does it, is set out in full in our child safety standards;
- is somebody else's private information — an address, a phone number, a document;
- impersonates another person;
- is illegal in Korea, or advertises something that is;
- is spam, a scam, or bulk messaging.
Reporting, blocking, and what happens next
Every post can be reported, and so can any single message — hold it in the conversation. Any member can be blocked from the menu on one of their posts, on their profile, on a conversation, or on one of their messages. Blocking somebody takes their posts out of your feed at once, and tells us: the block reaches the same reviewers as a report, with the post or message it was made from. Reports are read and acted on. Content that breaks the rules above is removed, and an account that keeps breaking them is closed.
If you are in danger, contact the police on 112. For counselling and interpretation in thirteen languages at any hour, the Danuri helpline is 1577-1366.
HereKorea Pro, and what you are buying
Everything the app is for is free: reading the board, joining rooms, joining and speaking in live audio rooms, posting, messaging, events and the benefits handbook. HereKorea Pro is an optional auto-renewing subscription that adds four things — putting up a roommate listing, opening a group chat, thirty readings a month in Read my mail instead of three, and three and a half hours a day of hosting live audio rooms instead of one.
Opening a live audio room is free as well, and metered either way. Without a subscription you may host for a total of one hour a day; with one, for three and a half hours. Both are counted against Seoul's calendar day and reset at midnight, and a room still running when the time is up is closed. The length of that allowance is the only difference a subscription makes to the feature.
- What it is called — HereKorea Pro.
- How long — one month, renewing every month until you cancel.
- What it costs — USD 2.99 per month in most countries, and ₩6,600 per month in Korea from 11 September 2026 — or the equivalent shown by your store in your own currency and tax. Which of these you are charged follows the country of your App Store or Play account rather than where you live. The price in the app at the moment you subscribe is the price, and anyone already subscribed keeps the price they signed up at; if it ever changes for you, the store asks you again before charging the new one.
- Who charges you — Apple or Google, through the account you are signed into on your phone. We never see your card. Payment is taken when you confirm, and again on each renewal.
- Renewal — automatic, unless you turn it off at least 24 hours before the period ends. It renews at the same price for the same length.
- Cancelling — in your store account, which is the only place the button exists: on iOS, Settings → your name → Subscriptions; on Android, Play Store → Subscriptions. The app takes you there from Settings → Subscription. Cancelling stops the next charge and you keep what you paid for until the period runs out.
- Refunds — handled by the store that charged you, under its own policy, not by us. Cancelling does not by itself refund the period you are in.
A subscription is a licence to use these features on your own account while it is running. It is personal to you, it is not transferable, and it does not survive the account being closed. Deleting your account does not cancel a subscription — that has to be done in the store, and it is worth doing first.
The handbook is information, not advice
The Benefits section describes public programmes run by Korean government bodies. It is written to help you find the right office and is not legal, tax, immigration or financial advice.
Whether you qualify for any of it depends on your visa and your circumstances, and the rules change. Every entry names the body that actually decides. Confirm with them before you rely on anything you read here.
Things this app does not promise
- That it is always available. It is one server, and it goes down for deployments and for faults.
- That other members are who they say they are beyond the residence card check, or that anything they tell you is true.
- That a message, a post or a photograph is kept forever. Photographs in conversations are deleted with age — see the Privacy Policy for the timings.
Meeting people from the internet carries the risks it always has. Use your judgement, meet in public, and tell somebody where you are going.
Read my mail sends your photographs to Google
Read my mail photographs a Korean document and tells you what it says. It cannot do that on this server: the photographs are sent to Google's Gemini model to be read, on servers outside Korea, and the answer comes straight back. Whatever is printed on the page goes with it. Nothing else does — not your name, your phone number, your account or where you are.
The app says all of that on its own screen and asks you to agree before it will open the camera, and you can take that back at any time in Settings → Read my mail. Nothing is stored on either side: the photographs are held for the length of that one request and the answer is not saved anywhere. The Privacy Policy sets this out in full.
What comes back is a reading of a photograph by a machine, and it can be wrong. It is not legal, tax, immigration or financial advice. Check anything with money or a date on it against the page itself, and for visas and residence status call 1345.
Ending it
You can delete your account at any time from Settings. It is immediate and it cannot be undone. We may close an account that breaks these terms, and will say why unless saying so would put somebody at risk.
Which law applies
These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Korea.
Changes
If these terms change in a way that matters, the date at the top changes with them and the app says so before the change takes effect. Contact: hidensideofthemoon@gmail.com.