Read books in Korean.
Open Han Kang, Hwang Sok-yong, Park Wan-suh. A literature that's getting harder to ignore, in a script that takes a few hours to learn.
Why read Korean books in the original
Korean has a phonetic alphabet (hangul) that takes a few hours to learn - one of the easiest scripts in the world to pick up. Then comes the grammar: SOV order, particles, honorifics, sentence-final endings that change tone and meaning.
The good news is that modern Korean novels are widely translated, so you can read alongside if you want. Han Kang's 채식주의자 won the Booker; Hwang Sok-yong is one of the most respected writers in East Asia. Reading in the original gives you what translation can't: the rhythm, the politeness levels, the way the sentence holds its meaning until the very last syllable.
Korean is also full of words that look familiar to anyone who's read modern Chinese - shared Sino-Korean vocabulary. If you've already studied another East Asian language, that's a head start.
What it looks like
아내가 채식을 시작하기 전까지, 나는 그녀가 특별한 사람이라고 생각해본 적이 없었다.
생각해본 → HAVE THOUGHT생각하다 (“to think”) plus -아 보다 (“to try doing”) in past form. Reads as: “had ever thought”. Korean expresses these subtle meanings through chains of suffixes - much harder to break down with a dictionary than in context.
Six Korean books worth your time
채식주의자
A woman stops eating meat, then stops eating, then stops being human. Three connected novellas. Han Kang's Korean is spare and precise.
소년이 온다
About the Gwangju massacre of 1980, told through the perspective of a teenage boy and the people who knew him. Heavy material, restrained prose.
82년생 김지영
A documentary-style novel that became a phenomenon. Modern Korean, conversational, and a window into contemporary South Korean life.
사람의 아들
A theological detective novel. Yi Munyol writes a Korean that's denser and more literary than most contemporary fiction.
그 많던 싱아는 누가 다 먹었을까
Park Wan-suh's autobiographical novel about growing up in Korea before and during the war. Warm, witty, and one of the most loved Korean novels of the 20th century.
객지
A short novel about migrant labour in 1970s Korea. Hwang's prose is clear, social, and direct.
How LinguaRead works with Korean
Drop in any Korean EPUB. Tap a word for the meaning, the part of speech, the politeness level (formal? polite? plain?). Tap again to see how the suffixes are working in this sentence.
Korean grammar lives in the verb endings. Reading is what gets you to feel the difference between 해, 해요, 합니다, 해주세요, 했어, 했었어. The grammar table is just a starting point.
Pick a Korean book. Start reading.
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