Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-10-11

Who we are

LingoLab Korean (https://lingolabkorean.net) is a language learning service for people studying Korean and other languages through sentence and word analysis. This website is operated by Culture Shock (Republic of Korea). For any privacy question or request, email info@lingolabkorean.net.

• Trade name: Culture Shock
• Representative: Kim Taimin
• Business registration number: 533-50-00752
• Mail-order sales registration number: No. 2022-Gwangju Buk-gu-1528
• Address: 54-18, Biennale-ro, Buk-gu, Jeonnam-Gwangju, Republic of Korea
• Email: info@lingolabkorean.net

Account data

If you register, we store profile information such as email and display name. You can view, edit, or request deletion of this information.

Study data

Guest tests may be stored temporarily in your browser. Signed-in study history and subscriber folders are saved so you can return later.

TOPIK practice tests

What we collect: when a signed-in member grades a TOPIK mock test, we store a TOPIK mock test attempt record: the test name, the attempt time, the time taken, your answers, and your score.

Why: to provide members with their own attempt records and grading results (“My test history”). Only you can see your records.

How long: until you delete your account. The records are deleted when you delete your account.

TOPIK Speaking recordings

What we collect: when you take a TOPIK Speaking test, your microphone records your answer to each task. We store the recording, a text transcript of it, your scores and the written AI feedback.

Why: to score your answers and show you your results, including playing back your own recording. The recording is sent to our AI provider to make the transcript, and the transcript is sent to it to make the scores and feedback.

Who can see it: only you. Recordings are kept in private storage and are played only through short-lived links made for your own account.

How long and deleting it yourself: until you delete the result or your account. When you press Delete on a Speaking result, the recording, transcript, scores and feedback are permanently deleted straight away. We keep only a short record that a deletion happened (when, and which result, without its content) in case of a dispute. Deleting your account deletes all of them.

Third-party AI

The text you enter for study, and voice recordings you submit for pronunciation checks and TOPIK Speaking tests, are sent to our AI provider to generate translations, explanations, pronunciation, and feedback. We do not send your password to that provider.

Payments

Our order process is conducted by our online reseller Paddle.com. Paddle.com is the Merchant of Record for all our orders. Paddle provides all customer service inquiries and handles returns. When you buy a subscription or token pack, Paddle collects and processes your payment details, billing address, and tax information under its own terms and privacy policy. We do not receive or store your full card details. We receive order information from Paddle, such as the purchased plan, payment status, and amount, so we can activate your subscription or tokens. See Paddle’s Buyer Terms.

Service providers

We use service providers to run the website, including hosting, database and login services, the AI provider mentioned above, Paddle for payments, and a form service that delivers messages sent from the Contact page. They process data only to provide their service to us.

Cookies and similar technologies

We use cookies and similar technologies, mainly your browser’s local storage and session storage. We group them into four categories:

• Strictly necessary (always on): your login session, counting your free daily study uses, a cache of your recent study results so the same sentence is not generated and charged again, short-term copies of your plan and token data for the open tab, the TOPIK practice test you are taking in the open tab (start time and picked answers), your cookie choice, and Paddle’s checkout script, which loads only when you start a purchase.
• Functional (only with your consent): remembering whether you collapsed the polite Korean notice on the study screen, which home-page announcements you hid for today, and the explanation language you picked under “From” on the study screen (llk-source-lang, local storage, kept until you delete it or withdraw consent).
• Analytics: we currently do not use any analytics tools.
• Advertising (only with your consent): we may show ads from Google AdSense. Google and its partners may use cookies to serve and measure ads, including ads based on your visits to this site and others. We do not sell your account data. You can refuse advertising cookies in Cookie settings, or opt out of personalized ads at https://adssettings.google.com.

You can change your choice at any time with “Cookie settings” in the site footer. If you withdraw functional consent, we delete those entries from your browser straight away. The full list is in our Cookie Policy.

Your rights

You may request an export or deletion of personal data we hold about you, except data we must keep for legal or security reasons. Send requests to info@lingolabkorean.net.

Account deletion

When you delete your account, access stops immediately, any active subscription is cancelled, your token balance is set to zero and your TOPIK practice test records are deleted. For 7 days the email is on hold: it cannot be used to sign in or to create a new account. After that, the rest of your account (sign-in details, profile and avatar, study folders and saved items, study usage records, and community posts, comments and images) is kept without access until it is permanently deleted. You can ask us to delete it sooner at info@lingolabkorean.net.

Some records must be kept by law. Payment, refund and token purchase records are kept for 5 years, as required for records of contracts, payments and supply under the Korean Act on the Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce, and are deleted after that. Paddle, our Merchant of Record, keeps its own order and invoice records under its own privacy policy. Refunds are handled as described in our Refund Policy.

Refunds

Subscriptions. Your monthly subscription starts as soon as your payment is confirmed, and your monthly base tokens are added to your account immediately. You can use the service until the end of the billing period you paid for.

Cancellation. You can cancel at any time from the Tokens page or through Paddle’s customer portal. Cancellation stops the next renewal: you will not be charged again, and you keep access and your tokens until the end of the current billing period. Before that date you can undo the cancellation.

No refunds. All payments (subscriptions and token packs) are non-refundable. We do not give full, partial, or prorated refunds for unused time or unused tokens, including after cancellation.

Immediate digital delivery. Tokens and subscription features are digital content supplied immediately after payment. At checkout you expressly request immediate supply and acknowledge that you lose any statutory right of withdrawal once supply has begun.

Your statutory rights. Nothing in this policy limits rights you have under mandatory consumer law in your country, such as a right of withdrawal that has not been lost or a remedy if the service is faulty or not as described. Where the law requires a refund, one will be given.

Paddle. Payments and refunds are processed by Paddle.com, our Merchant of Record. Paddle may, at its own discretion, grant refunds under its Buyer Terms and Refund Policy. If a purchase is refunded or charged back, the tokens granted by that purchase are removed from your account. See Paddle’s Buyer Terms and Refund Policy. Questions: info@lingolabkorean.net, or contact Paddle at paddle.net.

This policy applies to purchases made on or after 27 September 2026 (2026-09-27). Purchases made before that date remain subject to the refund policy in effect when they were made.

Contact

Culture Shock: info@lingolabkorean.net