Whose Name Goes on Your Korean Business Card as a Foreign Brand

Your last name. When a Western brand goes local in Korea with us, the name that appears on the business card, the entity paperwork, and — where the structure allows — the seller account is the client's own. Kontactic runs the operation; it does not put itself in your place. That is not a courtesy. It follows directly from the legal relationship each of our services is built on: your brand and your liability stay yours, and we work for you — never as your distributor, partner, or shareholder.

This is one of those small questions that comes up on a founder call and turns out to sit on top of a much larger design decision. So it is worth answering precisely.

The short answer: the named party is you, not us

The short answer is that Kontactic never takes ownership of your Korean entity or your brand — so it is never the "owner" name on the things that matter. Across our services, Kontactic works for you — as your operating agent, or as your Importer & Seller of Record — not as a distributor, joint venture partner, or equity holder.

That principle is written into each agreement in plain terms. Under our Importer & Seller of Record service (Spark), our Korean entity is the importer, so for customs and tax it holds legal title to the goods it imports and sells. Commercially, the goods remain your business: you keep control of pricing, your brand, and what happens to unsold stock — and you're paid for what sells. Under our agreement, you are responsible for product compliance and indemnify us. Under Blaze, the relationship is an operating agency arrangement (운영대행): you own the Korean entity and all associated assets, and Kontactic is the authorized operating agent — with no access to the entity's bank accounts and no authority to sign in its name.

Where the name shows up — and where it depends on the service

Whose name appears is not one answer. It splits along three surfaces: the business card, the entity filings, and the seller account. The first two are always the client's. The third depends on which service you use.

Here is the honest breakdown.

• The business card. Our card spec is straightforward: front carries the Kontactic logo, a name in English and Korean (for example, "CEO Isaac Lee 이이삭"), mobile, office number, email, and address, printed at the Korean standard 90mm × 50mm. When we operate on your behalf, the representative name printed is the person actually accountable for the business — your representative — not a stand-in.
• The entity filings. Under Blaze, Kontactic runs your own Korean limited company (유한회사) — one you already have, or one set up through our entity setup service. You are the entity owner; Kontactic holds no stake. The registered representative and the ownership on file are yours.
• The seller account. This is the one that flips. Under Spark, Kontactic is the Seller of Record, so the sale runs under Kontactic's entity: on Coupang for Spark Subscription, or to Korean trade buyers or at an event for a Spark Project. Under Blaze, the Seller of Record is your own entity, so the account sits under your company. Under Direct — for brands shipping from the US, Europe, Japan, mainland China or Hong Kong — you sell cross-border on Coupang from your own seller account, in your own name, with no Korean entity at all.

If you want the deeper mechanics of who is legally accountable on the customs side of that same question, we walk through it in who is the Importer of Record when you sell on Coupang.

Why the seller account name flips between Spark and your own entity

The seller account is the one surface that changes, and the reason is structural, not stylistic. It comes down to who is the Importer of Record (IoR) and Seller of Record (SoR).

Spark is our Importer & Seller of Record service — similar in concept to a Merchant of Record service for SaaS, but built for importing and selling physical products in Korea. It lets you sell locally without establishing a Korean entity. To make that possible, Kontactic's own Korean entity serves as the Importer of Record and Seller of Record. It comes in two forms: Spark Subscription, for Coupang-approved sellers in mainland China, where products are listed on Coupang under a seller account held by Kontactic's entity; and Spark Project, for one defined project such as supplying Korean trade buyers, a pop-up, or a one-off import. So the visible seller is Kontactic — while you keep control of pricing, your brand, and what happens to unsold stock, and you remain the party responsible for product claims and advertising content.

Blaze works the other way. Your own Korean entity is both the IoR and the SoR. Your company holds the seller account, files under its own tax registration, and appears as the seller, while Kontactic runs the operation as its agent.

The distinction founders should hold onto: the Seller of Record can be Kontactic (under Spark) or your entity (under Blaze), but the commercial decisions — price, brand, and what happens to unsold stock — stay with you either way, and entity ownership is either non-existent for the client (Spark, where you have no entity) or fully the client's with no Kontactic stake (Blaze). If you are weighing the tradeoffs of that choice more broadly, the agency vs IoR vs entity comparison lays out how the three models actually differ in practice.

What stays yours regardless of the name on the account

Even under Spark — where the seller account is Kontactic's — the parts that determine legal exposure stay with you. This is the point founders most often get backwards.

Two things in particular:

1. Product-level liability. You bear sole responsibility for any claims, disputes, regulatory actions, penalties, or liability arising from advertising content, product claims, and marketing materials — regardless of whether that content was created by you, provided to Kontactic, or jointly developed. Even when Kontactic produces creatives under Blaze, they are subject to your approval and you hold full responsibility for product claims, substantiation, and regulatory exposure.
2. Operational cost funding. All operational costs — inventory procurement, international shipping, platform fees, advertising spend — are ultimately borne by you. Under Spark they are deducted from settlement funds; under Blaze they are funded from the entity's revenue or paid directly by you. We cover exactly how that money moves in who pays for what in Korea.

In our experience, the confusion happens because the visible seller name (Kontactic, under Spark) and the accountable party (you, always) can differ. That gap is intentional infrastructure, not a loophole. Kontactic provides the import and selling authority; you keep control of the business and the responsibility.

Common questions

If Kontactic is the Seller of Record under Spark, does Kontactic own my products? Only in the sense customs and tax require. Our Korean entity is the importer, so for customs and tax it holds legal title to the goods it imports and sells. Commercially, the goods remain your business: you set the price, unsold stock is returned, re-exported, or disposed of at your cost, and you are paid for what sells. We are not a distributor — we don't set prices, take inventory risk, or keep a margin; we charge our service fees.

Under Blaze, whose name is on the Korean entity? Yours. The Korean limited company (유한회사) is established under your ownership, and Kontactic holds no stake in it. You are the entity owner and the registered representative.

Whose name goes on the business card? The representative who is actually accountable — your representative. The card carries the Kontactic logo and standard contact details, but the named person is the one responsible for the business, not a Kontactic substitute.

Does Kontactic become a partner or equity holder in my business? No. Across all our services, Kontactic works for you — not as a distributor, joint venture partner, or equity holder. The Importer of Record explainer covers the related question of who is legally accountable at the border.