Who Approves Your Korea Ad Creative — and Who Is Liable

The brand approves every ad creative and carries full legal liability for every product claim in Korea — even the creatives Kontactic writes. Production can be shared; approval and liability cannot. That split is fixed across all three of our service tiers, and it is the single most misunderstood part of running paid growth in a market a foreign founder can't read.

This is a working note on how we handle that boundary in practice, because founders ask about it almost every week: if you write the ad, aren't you on the hook for it? No. And the reason is worth spelling out.

The short answer: brand approves, brand is liable

The short answer is that regardless of who physically produces a creative, the brand holds final approval and sole responsibility for the claims inside it.

Our agreements say this in almost identical language across tiers. The Client "bears sole responsibility for any claims, disputes, regulatory actions, penalties, or liability arising from advertising content, product claims, marketing materials, or any representations" made about the products — and that responsibility holds "regardless of whether such content was created by the Client independently, created by Kontactic on behalf of the Client, or jointly developed by the Parties."

The reason is structural, not a fee-avoidance clause. Kontactic acts as your operating agent, not as a distributor, reseller, or equity holder. We never take ownership of your products at any point. Product-level liability rests with you — the owner — before, during, and after a sale. Advertising liability is just product liability wearing a marketing jacket: a claim about what your product does is a claim you must be able to prove.

Why we still write your creative — and why that doesn't shift the risk

Sharing production and sharing liability are two different things, and conflating them is where most of the confusion starts.

Under our fuller-service tiers, we do produce creative. Blaze includes growth strategy and marketing (Layer 3), so we run campaigns end to end. But the agreement is explicit that "creatives produced by Kontactic are subject to the Client's approval, and the Client holds full responsibility for product claims, substantiation, and regulatory exposure." In other words: we can hand you a finished Korean ad, but it does not go live until you approve it, and approving it is you standing behind the claim.

In practice this is healthier than it sounds. A Korean-market creative that a foreign founder cannot read is exactly the kind of thing that goes wrong quietly — a translated superlative, a health-adjacent phrase, a comparison that reads as fine in English and as a regulated claim in Korean. Because approval is a real gate and not a rubber stamp, both sides have a reason to check the claim, not just the layout. We surface the claim, you decide whether you can substantiate it, and only then does it ship.

This is also why we push operational readiness before ad spend: if the approval loop is treated as an afterthought, brands burn budget on creative that stalls at sign-off or, worse, goes live with a claim nobody can defend.

How the split works across Spark, Flame, and Blaze

The production split changes by tier. The approval and liability split does not.

• Spark (IoR & SoR service): You manage marketing and listings. Content is either created by you or jointly developed, and you provide assets to us for use. You approve, you're liable.
• Flame (infrastructure & operations): Marketing strategy is your responsibility. We handle Coupang on-platform operations, but the creative direction sits with you. You approve, you're liable.
• Blaze (full managed service): We add growth strategy and marketing, so we produce and run the creative. It's still subject to your approval, and you still hold full responsibility for the claims. You approve, you're liable.

Read down the table and the pattern is blunt: the "who produces" row moves from you toward us as you move up the tiers, but the "who approves" and "who is liable" rows never move. They stay with the brand in every tier.

That consistency is deliberate. It's the same logic that keeps your name on the Korean seller account and entity filings: you own the business, so you own the exposure. An operator who quietly absorbed claim liability would, in effect, be making promises about a product it doesn't own and can't substantiate. Neither party wants that.

The one place approval is a hard, written gate: Coupang PPC

For paid advertising specifically, approval is not a vibe — it's a documented pre-launch requirement.

On the operations side, we set up and manage Coupang on-platform pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns: keyword strategy, bid optimization, campaign structuring, and performance tuning. But the agreement requires that we "obtain the Client's prior written approval before launching any campaign or making material changes to campaign budgets." No campaign launches, and no budget gets materially moved, without your written sign-off first.

Two practical consequences follow from that:

1. Nothing runs silently. A campaign can't go live, and your spend can't jump, without a written approval on file. If you never approved it, it didn't run.
2. You fund 100% of the spend. Advertising cost is an operational cost, and every tier puts operational costs on the client — funded from your Korean entity's revenue, deducted from settlement, or paid directly. The approval gate and the funding responsibility line up: you approve what you pay for.

Common questions

If Kontactic writes the ad, why am I liable? Because you own the product, and the claim is about your product. Who drafted the copy doesn't change who has to substantiate the claim or answer a regulator. Every tier's agreement states this plainly.

Can I hand off approval so I don't have to review Korean creative I can't read? No — and you shouldn't want to. Approval is where the claim gets caught. We surface what the creative is actually claiming and you decide whether it's substantiable; that check is the whole value of the gate. It's also a core reason to sequence operational readiness ahead of ad spend.

Does this change if I only use the Spark tier and don't ask you to make creative? No. Under Spark the creative is typically yours or jointly developed, but the liability language is the same: the brand bears sole responsibility for the claims.

Who pays for the advertising itself? You do — 100% of actual spend. It's treated as an operational cost across all tiers, funded from your entity's revenue, deducted from settlement, or paid directly.

What has to happen before a Coupang PPC campaign goes live? Your prior written approval. The same applies to any material change in campaign budget. This is a contractual pre-launch step, not an internal courtesy.