How to learn Korean by reading

Korean has one of the most learner-friendly alphabets in the world. Hangul was created in the fifteenth century under King Sejong, so that ordinary people could learn to read, and it shows: 24 basic letters, whose consonant shapes even sketch the position of the mouth and tongue, combined into syllable blocks. Many learners can sound out a page within days.

Then the real work begins. Korean grammar is built very differently from English, words change their sound depending on what follows them, and every sentence encodes the relationship between speaker and listener. Reading is how all of this becomes familiar. And unlike Japanese and Chinese, Korean puts spaces between words (with their particles attached), so you can at least see where each one starts. The reward is a literature the world has started to notice: in 2024, Han Kang became the first Korean writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

What makes Korean hard to read

• Spelling and sound. Hangul spells the underlying form of a word, and the pronunciation shifts at the joins: 합니다 is pronounced hamnida, 국물 (“broth”) gungmul, 같이 (“together”) gachi, 좋다 (“good”) jota. You’ll recognize a word on the page long before you recognize it in speech, which is why listening while you read matters so much.
• Particles. 은/는 mark the topic, 이/가 the subject, 을/를 the object, and each comes in two forms depending on whether the word before it ends in a consonant or a vowel.
• Verb-final sentences and long modifiers. Everything that describes a noun comes before it: 어제 시장에서 산 사과 is “the apple (I) bought at the market yesterday,” literally “yesterday market-at bought apple.”
• Endings that carry a lot. One verb can carry tense, respect, mood and a link to the next clause. 가셨겠어요 means roughly “(he) must have gone,” with respect to the person who went and politeness to the person you’re talking to.
• Speech levels. Korean grammar changes with the relationship between speaker and listener. Learners usually start with the polite 해요 style (가요, “goes”); written narration usually uses the plain style (간다, 갔다); and close friends in dialogue speak 반말, the casual style.
• Respectful vocabulary. Some everyday words have honorific replacements when the person they refer to deserves respect: 먹다 (“eat”) becomes 드시다, 자다 (“sleep”) becomes 주무시다, and 집 (“home”) becomes 댁. In stories with grandparents, teachers or kings, you’ll meet both.
• Sino-Korean vocabulary. A large part of Korean vocabulary, especially formal and abstract words, comes from Chinese roots. Learning a root pays off: 학, “study,” appears in 학교 (school), 학생 (student) and 대학 (university).

New to Hangul? Our guide to learning a new script shows how to learn it by reading with audio.

Korean reading at each level

Here is roughly what each CEFR level looks like in Korean:

• A2, elementary. Short sentences, mostly in the present and past, in the polite 해요 style common in material for learners. Simple connectors like -고 (“and”) and -지만 (“but”).
• B1, intermediate. Narration in the plain written style (-었다), connectors such as -아서/-어서 (“so”), -(으)면 (“if”) and -는데 (which sets the scene for what follows), noun-modifying clauses, and reported speech with -다고 했다.
• B2, upper intermediate. Passive and causative verbs, long modifying clauses, honorific dialogue, and four-character idioms borrowed from Chinese (사자성어).
• C1, advanced. Close to the original, lightly condensed. C2 is the complete text.

See CEFR levels explained for more on the scale.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz at A2 and at B2

The start of Dorothy’s adventure, written for this page at two levels:

A2

도로시는 강아지 토토와 함께 캔자스에 살았어요. 어느 날 큰 회오리바람이 불었어요. 바람이 집을 하늘로 날려 버렸어요.

Dorothy lived in Kansas with her little dog Toto. One day a great whirlwind blew. The wind carried the house away into the sky.

B2

회오리바람에 휩쓸려 낯선 나라에 떨어진 도로시는 집으로 돌아갈 방법을 찾기 위해 노란 벽돌 길을 따라 에메랄드 시티로 향했다.

Swept up by the whirlwind and dropped in a strange land, Dorothy set off along the yellow brick road toward the Emerald City to find a way to get home.

The A2 version uses three short sentences in the polite past (-었어요), each with its verb at the end. The B2 version is one sentence in the plain written style (향했다), and everything before 도로시는, swept up by the wind and dropped in a strange land, is a clause describing her. Notice the two modifier endings: 떨어진 (“who had fallen”) looks back, while 돌아갈 방법 (“a way to return”) looks forward.

A daily routine for reading Korean

1. Pair your eyes and ears. Play a few pages with the read-along on, so each word lights up as you hear it. Korean’s sound changes become obvious when you see the spelling and hear the speech at the same moment.
2. Read it again, aloud. Read the same lines along with the narrator, or straight after. It trains your eye and your mouth on the same sound rules.
3. Tap only what blocks you. When a verb is buried under endings, the base form tells you what it is; the ending you’ll learn by meeting it again.
4. Notice one ending a day. Pick a connector like -는데 or -(으)니까 and watch for it as you read. Endings are where Korean grammar lives.

There’s good evidence that the audio helps. Webb and Chang (2015, “Second language vocabulary learning through extensive reading with audio support”) followed learners who read graded books while listening to them, and found that they learned a substantial share of the words they hadn’t known and kept much of that months later. More in our guides to reading while listening and extensive reading.

Classics to start with

• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is simple, episodic and bright, a natural first book at A2.
• The Secret Garden is a calm, rewarding story with lots of description of the garden coming back to life, ideal at B1.
• A Christmas Carol is short and famous, and the three spirits who visit Scrooge give it a clear shape at B1.
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes offers short stories that each end with a solution, at B1 and B2.
• Treasure Island is a fast adventure with plenty of dialogue, good at A2 or B1.

Reading Korean with Lexo

Korean’s sound changes are where Lexo’s audio earns its place. Every word can be played on its own, so you hear 합니다 as hamnida the moment you wonder, and the whole book is narrated, with different voices for different characters and each word highlighted as it’s spoken.

Tap a word and a card shows what it means in that sentence, its base form and its part of speech: 갔다 leads to 가다, “to go,” however many endings it’s wearing. It also gives the word’s reading in Latin letters, a handy check while Hangul is still new. The card explains phrases and idioms as a whole and translates the full sentence into English, which helps with long sentences full of modifiers. Sentence-by-sentence mode takes those one at a time, with audio and translation, and words you want to keep go into your Words list.

Every book comes at five levels, A2 to C2, chosen book by book. Many Korean editions don’t exist until a reader asks; ask for The Secret Garden at a level no one has asked for yet and Lexo writes it for you, chapter 1 within minutes and the rest while you read, with a dated “First edition” mark that stays yours. Books live on your device, so they work offline, and purchases go through your Apple ID, with no separate account.

Korean shares much of its grammar with Japanese and much of its vocabulary with Chinese.

Lexo is coming soon to the App Store for iPhone and iPad. Get notified at launch.