Terms of Use

The agreement that holds between the magazine and you when you read, share, comment on, or contribute to indianakorean.com — written in plain English, governed by the law of Indiana.

These terms set the rules of the road for indianakorean.com. By reaching the site — whether you arrived by typing the address, following a link, or opening a story we sent in the newsletter — you accept the terms below. If any part of them is unworkable for you, the right move is to stop using the site. If most of them are workable but one paragraph is not, write to admin@indianakorean.com and we will hear you out; that is what a small editorial operation is for.

i. The parties, and what counts as the site

These terms run between Indiana Korean, an online magazine operating from Carmel, Indiana (“the magazine,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), and you, the reader or contributor accessing indianakorean.com and any sub-domain or related newsletter (“the site”).

“The site” includes the writing, photography, illustration, audio, video, layout, code, branding, and design that make up indianakorean.com — and the newsletter we send by email under the same masthead. Where these terms refer to “you,” we mean any individual using the site, whether or not you have created an account or signed up for the newsletter.

ii. Your license to read and share

The magazine grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to do the following with what we publish:

1. Read it. On any device, free of charge, for as long as the site is online.
2. Share a link to it. Anywhere — social platforms, group chats, the back of an envelope.
3. Quote it in another publication or piece of writing, in a normal editorial way, with attribution to Indiana Korean and a link back to the original. A normal editorial quotation is a paragraph or so; for anything more, write us.
4. Save a copy for your own private reading or research, with the same attribution rule applying if you later use it.

Everything outside that list — bulk republishing, mirroring, scraping for an LLM training set, redistributing under a different masthead, translating an article and posting it without permission — is not granted by this license. To do any of those things you need explicit written permission from the editor.

iii. Acceptable use

You agree not to use the site, or anything we publish, to do any of the following:

• Break a U.S. federal law, an Indiana state law, or the law of any place where you happen to be sitting when you use the site.
• Send unsolicited bulk messages, automated comments, or spam through any feature we offer (including the contact form, contributor form, or newsletter reply).
• Run a scraper, crawler, or harvesting tool that ignores our robots.txt, exceeds reasonable request rates, or extracts content for training a machine-learning model without our written consent.
• Reverse engineer, decompile, or otherwise interfere with the operation of the site or its supporting services.
• Submit anything you do not own and have no right to submit, including text, images, audio, or video that would infringe a third party's copyright, trademark, right of publicity, or right of privacy.
• Harass, threaten, defame, or impersonate another person — whether in a comment, in a contributor pitch, in a reply to the newsletter, or anywhere else on the site.
• Upload malware, exploit a security vulnerability, or use the site as a stepping stone toward an attack on another system.
• Misrepresent your identity or affiliation in a way that could mislead the editor about a contribution, a tip, or a correction request.

The magazine reserves the right, but is not obligated, to remove a comment, refuse a submission, or block an IP that violates this section.

iv. Contributor submissions

The page Join the magazine invites readers to send essays, letters, reviews, photographs, and interview leads. When you send a contribution — through that form, by email, or in a comment thread — the following terms apply.

You keep the copyright

You retain ownership of what you submit. The magazine never claims your copyright. Where we publish a contributor piece, the byline names the contributor, and any later use of the piece outside the magazine is the contributor's call.

What you grant us

By submitting a piece, you grant Indiana Korean a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to: edit the piece for clarity, length, and house style; publish it on indianakorean.com and in the newsletter; archive it for as long as the site exists; promote it on social platforms and in editorial selections (for example, in a year-end roundup). The license is irrevocable for content already published, but you may withdraw a draft at any time before it goes live.

What you confirm

• The work is your own, or you have the rights to submit it.
• It does not infringe a third party's copyright, trademark, or privacy right.
• It does not contain material the editor would reasonably consider defamatory, fraudulent, or otherwise unlawful.
• Where the piece names a private person, that person is comfortable being named — or you have flagged the issue to the editor in advance.

If a contributor submission is later found to violate the confirmations above, the magazine may remove the piece and ask the contributor to stand behind the assurances they gave. (See Indemnification, below.)

Compensation

Most contributor pieces in this period of the magazine are unpaid. Where a piece is commissioned with a fee, the terms — including kill fee, rights window, and payment schedule — are set out in a short letter of agreement between the contributor and the editor. Nothing in this section creates an employment relationship, a partnership, or any obligation beyond the specific commission.

v. Intellectual property

The site, taken as a whole — its writing, photography, illustration, layout, code, masthead, fonts as licensed, and visual identity — is © Indiana Korean. All rights are reserved except where granted in section 2 or where a piece is by a contributor who retains their own copyright. Indiana Korean and the masthead lockup (including its Korean-script form) are trademarks of the magazine, used in commerce since 2026.

If you believe content on the site infringes your copyright, please send a notice to admin@indianakorean.com with: a description of the work; the URL where it appears; your contact information; a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is unauthorized; and a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information is accurate and that you are authorized to act for the rights holder. We will respond in line with the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 512) and Indiana law.

vi. Disclaimer of warranties

To the maximum extent permitted by Indiana law, the site, the newsletter, and everything we publish are provided “as is” and “as available.” The magazine disclaims all warranties, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, completeness, and uninterrupted availability. We do not warrant that the site will be free of errors, interruptions, viruses, or other harmful components, nor that any defect will be corrected.

Some U.S. states do not allow the exclusion of certain implied warranties; in those states, the exclusions above apply only to the extent the state permits.

vii. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by Indiana law, in no event will Indiana Korean, its editor, its contributors, or any service provider acting on its behalf be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages — including loss of profits, loss of data, loss of goodwill, or business interruption — arising out of or in connection with your use of the site, even if the magazine has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

The magazine's total cumulative liability arising out of or relating to these terms or the site, in contract, tort, or otherwise, will not exceed the greater of (a) one hundred U.S. dollars (USD 100), or (b) the amount you have paid the magazine in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim. For most readers, who pay nothing to read the magazine, the cap is the USD 100 floor.

This section reflects a fundamental allocation of risk between the magazine and the reader; without it, the magazine could not be operated as a free-to-read publication.

viii. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Indiana Korean, its editor, and its contributors from and against any claim, demand, loss, liability, or expense (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of: (a) your breach of these terms; (b) your violation of any law or third-party right; (c) any content you submit to the magazine that breaches the assurances in section 4; or (d) your use of the site in a way not permitted by these terms.

ix. Third-party links and services

Our writing links to other places on the internet — restaurants, government pages, other publications, sometimes a recipe blog. We choose those links in good faith on the day they are published, but we do not control what happens at the other end. The magazine is not responsible for the content, policies, or practices of any third-party site or service that we link to or that links to us.

x. Governing law and venue

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Indiana, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. Any state-court action arising out of these terms or the site shall be brought exclusively in the state courts of Hamilton County, Indiana; any federal-court action shall be brought exclusively in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division. You and the magazine consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts and waive any objection based on inconvenient forum.

xi. Dispute resolution

Before filing any formal action, the parties agree to make a good-faith effort to resolve a dispute by writing to admin@indianakorean.com with the subject line Notice of Dispute, describing the issue and the relief sought. The magazine will reply within thirty (30) days. If the dispute is not resolved within sixty (60) days of that notice, either party may proceed to court under section 10.

Each party agrees that any claim must be brought in an individual capacity and not as part of a class action or representative proceeding. Either party may seek interim injunctive relief in court for misuse of the magazine's intellectual property without first complying with the notice procedure above.

xii. Termination

The magazine may suspend or end your access to the site, and remove any submission you have made, at any time and for any reason, particularly if you breach these terms. You may stop using the site at any time. The sections that by their nature should survive termination — including section 5 (Intellectual property), section 6 (Disclaimer), section 7 (Limitation of liability), section 8 (Indemnification), section 10 (Governing law), and this section — will continue in force.

xiii. Changes to these terms

We will update these terms when the magazine's practice changes, when the law changes, or when something here can be made clearer. The version date at the top of the page will move forward when we do. Material changes will be announced on the homepage and in the next newsletter issue. Continued use of the site after a change becomes effective is your acceptance of the new version.

xiv. Severability and entire agreement

If a court of competent jurisdiction finds any provision of these terms unenforceable, that provision will be enforced to the maximum extent permissible and the remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect. These terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the Disclaimer, are the entire agreement between you and Indiana Korean about your use of the site, and supersede any earlier agreement on the same subject. A failure by the magazine to enforce a right is not a waiver of that right.

xv. Contact

For any question about these terms, including a request for written permission to republish or translate:

• Email: admin@indianakorean.com
• Postal: Indiana Korean, c/o the Editor, Carmel, Indiana, USA. (Mail address provided on request to confirm receipt.)