New Korean to read and hear, every day.

Four kinds of reading

Switch between them with the tabs at the bottom of the screen. Every sentence comes with Korean audio.

News tab

This Week in Korea

Short Korean news stories we write from announcements by public bodies and widely reported facts. Each comes in two levels, Easy and Standard (news style); switch between them at the top of the list.

K-Drama tab

K-Drama Next Door

Short fictional dramas written in the style of Korean online forums: advice posts and real-life stories, comment threads and all. Internet Korean such as ㅋㅋ appears just as it's written online, and each writer has their own voice in the audio. With “Browse by tag” you can pick stories by setting, mood or the kind of Korean in them.

Trips tab

Kai's Train Trips

Kai, a Japanese student living in Korea, rides the KTX to cities around Korea and discovers the local food and way of life. The stories are fiction; the facts in them are collected, with sources, in the Travel notes.

Story tab

Kai's Journey

The story of Kai, a student who has just started living in Korea, told in short conversations (A1–A2). Read it one scene at a time. Every feature is free in the app.

Where to start

Each piece has a level badge, “≈ TOPIK n,” in the list and at the top of the text. It means you can read about 90% of the text with the words and grammar up to that level (names of people and places, and the topic words of the piece, aren't counted). It's a rough guide, not an official TOPIK rating. Start with pieces near your level, and move up when they feel easy.

If you're just starting Korean, begin with the first scene of Kai's Journey (≈ TOPIK 1).

How to read and listen

Read without the translation, and open help only where you get stuck. That's the basic flow.

1. Read with the translation hidden: leave “Translation” at the top switched off and read the Korean. Tap “Audio” on a sentence to hear it.
2. Tap words you don't know: the meaning opens right there (Look up words).
3. Tap underlines for grammar: underlined parts are grammar patterns (Look up grammar).
4. Still stuck? Tap “Show translation”: only that sentence's English translation opens.
5. When you've finished, tap “Read”: the words and grammar in that sentence are listed, and you can mark them “Known,” “Learning” or “Not yet” in one go (See the words you know). It's fine to tap it even if you didn't understand everything. The list shows how many sentences of each piece you've read. On the web version, the button is “Got it.”

If you look at the translation first, it's hard to tell whether you read the Korean or the English. That's why translations open one sentence at a time, only when you need them.

Listen all the way through

To listen to a whole piece, tap ▶ (Play all) at the top right. The sentences play in order, starting from the one at the top of your screen, and the sentence being played is highlighted. Stop, previous sentence and next sentence are on the bar that appears at the bottom. Once you understand a piece, try listening to it once more from start to finish.

Look up words

Tap a word and its details open from the bottom of the screen.

• You'll see its dictionary form, its part of speech and what it means in this sentence.
• For verbs and adjectives, “Form in this sentence” shows how the word changed from its dictionary form. For example, 유명해요 is 유명하다 in the polite 해요 style. “How it's formed” and “Other forms” show how the form is built, and the word's other forms in the 해요, 합니다 and 반말 styles and more.
• Below the details, “Sentences with this word” takes you to other sentences that use it.

Look up grammar

Underlined parts are grammar patterns. Tap one to see its meaning and an explanation.

• When the same form is used in different ways, each use gets its own entry. For example, -(으)니까 is explained separately as “because” (a reason) and as “when I did …, I found” (a discovery).
• Where a word and a grammar pattern overlap, switch between them with “Here” at the top of the details.
• “Where this pattern appears” takes you to other sentences with the same pattern. In the iPhone app, the Grammar book in the Words tab lets you find sentences for each pattern across News, Story, K-Drama and Trips (level 1 patterns are free, and levels 2 and up come with a subscription; see See the words you know).

Mark words and choose what's next

You can mark words and grammar patterns yourself, with the two buttons at the top right of the details. In the iPhone app, you can also mark everything in a sentence at once with “Read.”

• Choose “Known” if you'd understand it right away next time, and “Learning” if you probably would. Tap the selected one again to go back to “Not yet.”
• The share of words in a piece that you've marked Known is its known-word rate. On the News list, “Find your next article with the words you know” lists the articles that use many of your Known words. In the iPhone app, the cards in the Story, K-Drama and Trips lists show the rate too (once you have at least one Known word).
• Your marks and “Read” records are kept on the device you read on.

See the words you know

The Words tab at the bottom of the iPhone app shows the words you've marked, by level. Even when you read every day, it's hard to see how many words you've picked up. Here you can check it as numbers for each level.

• History: the words and grammar you marked Known this week, and a line of your total known words.
• Overview by level: how many TOPIK level 1–6 words and grammar patterns there are, and how many of them you've marked Known or Learning.
• Word book and Grammar book: lists for each level, with meanings, filters by your marks, and search in Korean or English. The Word book keeps the date you learned each word, and the Grammar book shows how many times each pattern appears in OtoOi's episodes. From the Grammar book you can find sentences with the same pattern across episodes.

You set the marks yourself, so the numbers are a record of how well you feel you know the words. The Words tab is a feature of the iPhone app.

After you finish

• K-Drama Next Door: after the comments, “Behind the story” explains the twist and its clues, the everyday life behind it, what to notice in the comments, and the internet slang.
• Kai's Train Trips: the “Travel notes” collect the facts in the episode with their sources, background on everyday life, and extra notes on the language.
• Kai's Journey: each scene links to a YouTube video of the same conversation (the videos are made for Japanese speakers).

We also suggest listening again to sentences you now understand (Listen all the way through).

What's free, and the subscription

In the iPhone app, the Korean text and audio of every episode are free. On top of that, every feature is free for 7 days after an episode comes out.

The Words tab in the iPhone app is split this way instead of by episode:

Word and grammar details also link to sentences in other episodes; if a sentence is in an episode older than 7 days, it opens with a subscription. In episodes older than 7 days, the meanings of level 2 and higher words in the “Read” list also come with a subscription. Kai's Journey is free with every feature, including older scenes. On the web version, the Grammar index tab at the bottom is a subscription feature.

About the subscription

• Choose a monthly or an annual plan, both with a 7-day free trial (once per Apple ID). Prices are shown in your local currency on the App Store and in the app.
• Subscriptions start in the iPhone app. “About the subscription” at the top of each list opens the subscription screen.
• The subscription renews automatically. If you cancel at least 24 hours before the free trial or the current period ends, it won't renew. You can cancel from Subscriptions in your iPhone's Settings.

Web version and iPhone app

“Read” (“Got it” on the web) and your marks are kept on each device. If you mostly read on one device, your records stay in one place.

FAQ