A 30-day Korean reading plan

How does the 30-day Korean reading plan work?

The plan uses real series from the Contos Korean library, named by their English titles. Before day 1 you need to be able to sound out Hangul, even slowly; if you can't yet, start with the Korean writing system. Each day follows the 15-minute reading routine: review, read for the story, read for the structure, read a paragraph aloud, sum up. Three rules shape the month:

1. One chapter a day is enough. The A1 chapters here run from 98 to 117 spaced words.
2. Every series gets a second reading. In Korean the early bottleneck is reading speed, and a chapter you already understand is the best place to build it. Second readings also bring new words round again before they fade.
3. Step up on day 11, then go slower. A2 chapters are about half as long again, and two of the five A2 series switch to formal polite narration, so the second half has more rereading built in.

The route below is free, because it uses chapters 1 and 2 of each series, and every chapter ends on a cliffhanger. If one story grabs you, the Premium version at the end swaps the rereads for the rest of that story.

Days 1–14: which A1 Korean stories do you start with?

Three short A1 series, a romance-mystery, a crime mystery and a sci-fi comedy, all narrated in the plain written -다 style that most Korean fiction uses. The sentences are about three spaced words long, so each one is a small puzzle of particles and a final verb.

The Secret in Handwriting follows a bookshop owner in Seoul's Seongbuk-dong who starts receiving handwritten letters. The Wallet's Secret starts with a lost wallet that comes back with extra money and an old note of thanks, and in Jiù the Good Robot's Day a cheap household robot learns more about its family than it should. This is the kind of sentence you'll be reading in the first week:

On the second-reading days, read both chapters of the series, one paragraph of each aloud, and notice how many fewer taps you need than the first time.

Days 15–30: how do you settle into A2?

Day 11 brought the first A2 chapter. The Bookshop Notes and The Village Choir are narrated in the formal polite -ㅂ니다 style, past tense, which is why they come first: the endings are long but very regular.

From day 16 the plan moves to three A2 series in plain narration, and the last week reads all five again.

Tomorrow's Radio is a mystery about an old guesthouse radio that reads out tomorrow's news; in The Match Error a dating app matches a junior marketer with her boss; The Day the Parcels Got Mixed Up begins with a courier swapping two boxes in the rain. Day 30 closes the loop: the chapter that took real effort on day 1 should now read in a few minutes.

What if you want to finish a whole series?

Chapters 3 onwards of every series need Contos Premium. With it, replace the second-reading days with the rest of the series you liked best. A Premium month might look like this:

• Days 1–6: all six A1 chapters of The Secret in Handwriting.
• Days 7–12: one more complete A1 series, such as The Wallet's Secret.
• Day 13: a review day.
• Days 14–30: two complete A2 series, starting with The Bookshop Notes, with a review day each week.

Free or Premium, check your known words at the end. Contos moves you to A2 at 500 known words, and in Korean every spaced form counts separately, so you may cross it sooner than you expect. If not, another A1 series is better practice than forcing the step. For what comes after, see Korean CEFR levels and how many Korean words you need.