10 Best Books to Learn Korean UK 2023

Striking the perfect balance between a simple layout and very practical content, we hope you'll love this book as much as we do! It's also extremely user-friendly and easy to navigate, so within just a few chapters you'll be able to conduct a simple conversation exchange with Koreans!

Another great feature is that it comes with plenty of written exercises, meaning that you'll be practising Hangul a lot, as well as free downloadable audio content. In no time at all, you'll realise you're acing all the writing and grammar points – learning a new language has never been this effortless!

If you find visual aids such as colourful imagery a much more stimulating and motivating way to learn, you'll love this book. You'll be learning vocabulary and sentences based on 38 different themes, which, most importantly, all apply to real life!

With Hangul, romanisation and English translation accompanied with all sentences and vocabulary, this book is very beginner-friendly, and you don't have to pressure yourself and make mistakes while reading them aloud.

Who doesn't like story time? With the aid of English translations, you'll be able to learn a lot of vocab and verbs all while reading Korean folktales. Not only you will understand the Korean culture more, but each story is accompanied by a comprehension exercise, the best way to practise your reading and writing skills!

With 42 stories included and an audio CD, the folk tales gradually increase in length, making sure you steadily progress on your language journey. You can always read the stories at your own pace too, of course.

This book is best for those who want to build a solid foundation of the Korean language. Besides detailed coverage of Hangul, it explains most irregular Korean verbs in depth, which are rather complicated to conjugate while constructing sentences – a grammar point that not all books cover.

With Korean historical facts included, you'll be learning and understanding Korean customs and culture as well as mastering the language aspect. And soon enough, you'll be confident enough to chat away and even teach your friends about Korean culture!

This book has a very structured content, so even after a few chapters you will have mastered reading Hangul and have the basic skills to understand and ask questions in Korean. In each exercise, there's a translation section which ensures you'll learn the Korean/English equivalent properly.

Though it's very accurate and concise, some of the vocabulary and ways of speaking demonstrated in this book are a little old-fashioned, so you might sound slightly odd when talking to younger Koreans if that's your aim!  

Unlike many others, this title comes with a workbook, so you'll have plenty of practice learning grammar, Hangul and more by heart. Besides audio materials, you can find supplementary materials on their YouTube channel, and there are continuation titles available once you're done. 

We do have to point out there are some minor mistakes and even incorrect corresponding answers in the answer book, which might be frustrating or even difficult for those who don't have language support.

If you're an audio input learner, then this is your book. It uses Hangul without romanisation, so not only you are 'forced' to learn Hangul quickly, but the audio material guides you to pronounce Korean like a pro!

As it does mainly focus on vocabulary, and not so much on grammar, even after finishing the book you still may not be able to conduct real-life conversations. It doesn't have many exercises for practising either, so you may need to supplement this guide with another grammar title or workbook. 

With many illustrations and numerous entertaining exercise designs, this book is perfect for visual learners of the Korean language. It covers all the basics you'll need to know, so don't worry if you've missed out on some core language-related knowledge previously. 

The downside of this book is that there isn't an answer book, so unless you have a friend who knows Korean checking your answers, you may never know your mistakes. The content is rather easy as well, so unless you are a complete beginner you will find this book a little unchallenging. 

This phrasebook is pocket-sized, making it easy to carry around with you at all times. With 100 different themes, you will learn some vocab from each theme followed by useful sentences that could be applied in real-life scenarios. Perfect to bring along while travelling in Korea!

As this title relies heavily on one's memorisation and has no illustrations nor audio materials, it may not suit those who want to build their skills from a strong foundation. However, it's a good pick if you have some understanding of the language, and are seeking some simple conversational exchange.

If you're an absolute beginner in the Korean language, then you will find this book useful. It focuses on learning all vowels and consonants of Hangul properly through writing and uses the method of resonating them with the English alphabets for easier learning. It also teaches you some very basic sentence structure.

Audio material isn't available for this book, so you will have to rely on YouTube or other online resources to learn the pronunciation of Hangul. Also, if you have some experience, perhaps from watching K-dramas, you might find this book a little too easy!