Editorial policy

Our standard

We want a friend who follows an LVR guide to come home and say, "I'm glad I did that." That means a clear recommendation, the reasons behind it, what you give up, and when a different choice would suit you better.

This page explains how we get there and what you can hold us to.

Four kinds of information, kept apart

Every guide separates:

First-hand experience. Something an editor actually did, saw or ate.
Opinion. An editor's own taste and judgment.
Researched facts. Hours, routes, rules and prices we checked against a source.
Supplier information. What a tour company or booking site says about its own product.

Each guide carries a label near the byline: First-hand, Researched or Supplier information, describing its main basis, plus the date its facts were last checked. Inside a researched guide, an editor's first-hand story or opinion is written in the first person so you can tell it apart from the checked facts around it.

First-hand experience

Our four editors (Brandon, Mina, Hana and Jin) are pen names, each run by a real member of our Korean team.

An editor's first-person experience comes only from that editor's own recorded statements. We keep these statements, with the date they were recorded, and writers may use nothing else as first-person experience.
We never invent a visit, a tour, a meal or a conversation. If no one on the team has done the thing we're writing about, the guide says so plainly. For example: "I haven't taken these tours."
Memories don't replace facts. If an editor recommends a restaurant they've loved for years, the hours, prices and directions still come from a current source.
Editors whose profiles aren't complete yet write researched guides only, without first-person visits.

Sources and dates

We prefer official and primary sources: tourism organizations, transit operators, airports, government and public agencies, and the business itself. When we rely on news reports or other secondary sources, we name them.
Every guide lists its sources under How we checked, with what each source supports and the date we checked it.
Things that change (hours, fares, prices, rules) are written with their date, for example "checked October 12, 2026."
When sources disagree, or something can't be confirmed, we say so rather than guess. For allergies and diets, we tell you to ask before ordering. We can't promise how a restaurant or tour will handle them.

Supplier information and tour cards

Some guides include tour cards with information from Viator, such as the title, a starting price, rating, review count, duration and cancellation terms. That information:

comes from the supplier, not from our own testing, and shows the date we last checked it;
can change at any time. A "from" price is a starting price, not the total for your date, group or options. Always check the final price and terms before you pay;
is never presented as our experience. A five-star average tells you what other travelers said, not what we think.

A tour description written in English doesn't prove the tour is guided in English. When it matters, we tell you to confirm it with the supplier.

Independence from affiliates

LVR earns money through affiliate links (see our affiliate disclosure). To keep that from bending our advice:

We choose what to recommend based on the reader's situation: time, companions, budget, energy and interests. A commission rate doesn't decide whether a product appears or where it ranks.
Where a do-it-yourself option works, we include it, even though it earns us nothing.
We say who a product is not for, and what you give up by choosing it.
No company pays to be included, ranked or reviewed. We don't let affiliate partners review or approve our guides before publication.

How we use AI

We're a small team, and AI tools help us work carefully at that size. This is what they do and don't do:

AI helps with: gathering and organizing official sources, drafting text from an editor's notes and verified research, checking links and dates, flagging changes in supplier data, and drafting illustrations from our own character sheets.
People are responsible for: first-hand experience, opinions and the final recommendation. An editor's voice comes from that person's own statements and taste, not from a model imagining them.
Every guide is checked before publishing. A review separate from drafting compares each factual claim with its source and confirms that no experience is attributed to someone who didn't have it. This review may use AI tools working from the sources, and Brandon Lee, our director, approves every guide before it’s published. Each guide names him as its reviewer.
AI output is never treated as a source. If a fact can't be traced to a source we checked, it doesn't go in.

Corrections and updates

If we get something wrong, we want to know. Write to to be confirmed with the subject line "Correction" and the page address. We’ll review it within 3 business days.

Errors: we fix the guide. If the mistake could have affected your plans, such as a wrong time, price, rule or meeting point, we add a short correction note saying what changed and when.
Routine re-checks: we re-check guides on a regular cycle by desk. Arrive & Move, Connect & Pay, and Stay are re-checked at least every 30 days. Eat & Drink, Culture & History, Neighborhoods, and Nature & Day Trips are re-checked at least every 60 days. These are maximum intervals, not a guarantee that nothing has changed since.
Faster triggers: a supplier change, a broken link, a reader's correction or a change in official rules sends a guide back for review right away.
Honest dates: we only change a guide's "updated" date when its content actually changed. A re-check with no changes is recorded as a check, not as an update.

Short, time-sensitive news posts (Dispatches) carry an end date and drop off the front page when it passes. They stay in our archive, marked with their date.

Images

Illustrations of our editors and scenes are original artwork made for LVR. We create them with AI image tools from our own approved character sheets, and an editor reviews each one. They are illustrations, never evidence that a visit happened, and they don't depict a real tour, product or venue as it looks.
Diagrams and charts are drawn by us from facts we've verified.
Photos are credited. We currently use openly licensed photos (for example from Wikimedia Commons under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, or Korea's KOGL Type 1), each checked on its source page. The caption gives the photographer, license and source, and we don't alter these photos. When our team takes photos, we credit the photographer and the place and date.
Supplier photos of a tour or product are shown only as a preview of that product, linked to it, and only where the supplier's terms allow.
We don't use AI to create a picture of a real dish, place, tour or room and present it as a photo.

Korean phrases

Our "Say it in Korean" cards use English to help you say a few Korean words. The sound hints are approximate, not official romanization. Sample replies and prices are illustrations, not quotes from a real shop. A native speaker reviews each card before it's published.

Your questions

The best guides start with a real traveler's question. Send yours to to be confirmed. If your question inspires a guide, we won't publish your name or personal details without your permission. We can't give personal booking support or change a reservation. For an existing booking, contact the company you booked with.

Who is responsible

Each guide shows the editor who wrote it. Overall editorial responsibility for LVR rests with Brandon Lee, our director and founding editor, on behalf of Mabro Labs Inc. (주식회사 마브로랩스).