How we build the data
Most English-language writing about studying in Korea is two to four years out of date, and a lot of it is now recycled from other writing that was already wrong. This page is the set of rules we hold ourselves to so that ours is different, written plainly enough that you can check whether we are keeping them.
Every figure carries a source and a date
Each dataset on the site records where a figure came from and when a person last checked it against that source. University profiles, scholarship pages, English-taught programme listings and the institutional risk data all carry this, and the dates are shown on the page rather than kept internally. If a figure looks old to you, that is because we are telling you it is old rather than hoping you do not notice.
For the risk data in particular, a figure may not cite a ministry home page. “It is on the Ministry of Education website” is not something you can check, so every number there points at a specific publication, and our own tests refuse to publish one that does not.
We work from primary sources, and read them in Korean
University data comes from each institution's own admissions material and from the annual Global Korea Scholarship guidelines. Scholarship terms come from the awarding body. Institutional risk data comes from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Justice, and the 대학알리미 statutory disclosure portal. Several of these publish only in Korean, as attachments, so we read the Korean document rather than the news coverage of it, and we host a copy of the document where we can so the link still works after the ministry reorganises its site.
An estimate is labelled as an estimate
Some things we would like to give you a precise number for are not published anywhere. Tuition is the common case: where an institution publishes a figure we use it and mark it verified, and where it does not we show a range derived from national and field averages and mark it as an estimate. The two are never rendered the same way, because a labelled estimate is useful and an unlabelled one is a false precision you might budget against.
What we will not publish
We do not publish admission-odds percentages, acceptance rates, or scholarship award rates that we cannot source. Those numbers are the ones students most want, which is exactly why so many sites invent them. We would rather tell you that a figure is not published than give you a confident one we made up.
We also do not publish testimonials or success stories. Curated testimonials tell you about the people who were selected to appear, not about your chances, and we have no way to show you the ones who were not selected.
Not published is not the same as zero
This distinction governs the institutional risk data and it is worth stating on its own. When we have not been able to source a figure for an institution, the page says so. It does not show a zero, a dash, or an empty space that could be read as a clean record. An institution absent from a certification list has not been shown to be uncertified: it may be uncertified, or the list may cover only that year's new certifications. We publish which of those we know.
A person reads it before it publishes
We use software to gather candidate figures out of long Korean documents, and it is quick and frequently wrong in ways that read fluently. So for the institutional risk data, nothing publishes until a person has read it against the source document, and the tooling records who did that and when. For the larger programme datasets, where the consequence of an error is smaller, rows publish with their source and an evidence quote and are reviewed in samples; we reserve the word verified for the ones a person has actually read.
We re-check things on a schedule, not when someone complains
Korean admissions rules are reissued every cycle, and the visa screening designations are reissued every semester. Risk records are flagged for re-verification after 180 days, because a record nobody has looked at in six months may be describing the previous academic term. Guides and scholarship pages are reviewed against each new official guideline as it is published.
When we get something wrong
We log it publicly. Every correction to a published figure, and every correction request we receive from an institution along with what we decided, is recorded on the corrections page. That log exists to be inspected, including by people looking for a pattern in it.
If you have spotted something, the feedback page reaches us. Anything affecting a deadline or a requirement goes to the front of the queue.
Related
Editorial standards covers how our written guides are researched and who writes them. The advertising policy covers what a commercial relationship with KoreaAdmit can and cannot buy, which is the other half of being able to trust a figure on this site.
Last updated · August 7, 2026