Learning Korean: 16 Best Online Courses & Reviews

As you already know, learning Korean gives you access to a group of people who are unique and exciting. You can talk to them about anything from Korean skincare, making kimchi and other Korean staples, the newest Korean movies and K-pop, and many other exciting things.

So, if you are thinking about learning a language, choose Korean. This post will list the 16 best Korean online courses, the learning levels, and the time it will take to learn the language.

And for an added daily dose of Korean, why not complement these courses with KoreaTab? This free Chrome extension offers new Korean words and cultural insights with each tab you open, perfect for immersing yourself in the language as you explore the best online courses listed below. Let’s dive in, and don’t forget to enhance your learning journey by installing KoreaTab!

Read also:

• Learn Korean Using Best Free Apps
• Ultimate Korea Travel Guide!
• Best Seoul Travel Passes for Your Perfect Seoul Trip
• 35 Korean Online Shopping From Groceries to Fashion & Cosmetics

Korea is beautiful and a must-go destination. As you already know, it stays beautiful all year long. Trust us, you’ll want to go there at some point in your life. South Korea welcomes you to Incheon International Airport, long considered the best airport in the world.

Hallyu, also called “The Korean Wave,” has led to the worldwide sale of many Korean music, movies, dramas, fashion, and even beauty products. Due to the recent success of Korean dramas abroad, many Korean actors and actresses are now being paid to promote international brands on billboards, TV, and radio.

What do you do if most of the arts and entertainment you can find are in Korean? You do indeed learn the language. You know it to enjoy the movies, songs, and dramas it offers. Those movies and TV shows aren’t going to watch themselves, after all.

Source: bilingua.io

At first, trying to learn a new language is very scary. You’ll spend hours to months learning a language that is either similar to your own or very different from it. You’ll have to start over, just like when you were a kid. You should spend at least a little money to get good information. But, hey, you can still learn Korean or any other language. Yes, it can be hard to understand or study Korean at first, but consider it an investment in your future. Think about how helpful and satisfying it will be later.

Is Learning Korean Hard?

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It can be hard to learn a new language, but it can also be enriching. Here are just a few facts about why Korean is different from other languages:

• Korean grammar is pretty easy to understand. There are no articles, and it’s easy to change the form of verbs. Because of this, Korean is easier to learn than some other languages.
• More than 80 million people worldwide can speak Korean, which means there are many opportunities to practice with people who speak it as their first language.
• The Korean language is concise. You can say complicated things with just a few words, which can be difficult for people learning the language but also speeds up conversations.
• Korea has a rich and exciting culture. There is much to discover, from traditional music and dance to tasty food and beautiful buildings. By learning Korean, you can learn more about this exciting culture.

As you can see, learning Korean has many benefits. So why not begin right now? You might be surprised by how fast you learn! For just 5 to 10 minutes a day, you can even learn Korean through a learning app like Ling, which makes learning interactive and fun.

In today’s high-tech world, it is possible to recreate an authentic, immersive Korean experience using online tools if you know where to look. Depending on your level of Korean and the kind of experience you want, online programs can be a big help on your way to learning the language.

Here are the best online Korean courses to help you use this language like a pro!

Top Recommended Online Courses for Learning Korean

Hanyang University’s Online Korean Course

• Best for Intensive beginner lessons
• Price: $240 for three weeks and $700 for ten weeks.
• A certificate is available.

This online course from the Hanyang University of International Education is for people who are just starting to learn Korean and want a solid foundation in the language. It is hosted on the Go! Go! Hanguk website, which helps people all over the world learn Korean. The lessons are based on the school’s elementary Korean textbook and are given as video-on-demand (VOD). Before signing up, students are expected to know at least the Korean alphabet.

Along with words and phrases, the course focuses on grammar so that you can understand and use correct sentence structure when you speak. You can ask your teacher questions or talk with other students in the online community as you go.

The whole course takes ten weeks, and each week comprises five units. You can also choose to join for only the first three weeks. After that, you can keep learning for the next seven weeks.

Udemy

• Best for Those who want a quick and easy course
• Price: From free to $199.99
• Certificate is available

You can find several Korean courses on Udemy by searching for “Korean.” One approach, in particular, that is worth looking at is the Korean Foundations course (“Learn Korean! Start Speaking Korean Now!”), which costs $74.99.

This online course is excellent if you prefer to study from something other than a book and would instead learn from (virtual) people. It will teach you the basics of communicating in Korean quickly and without much effort. This clever series teaches you the Korean language step by step using mnemonic images and helpful tips. It is all done through videos.

Pimsleur

• Best for learning through audio
• Price: starting from $150 per (Premium 1-3), and the full course is $350
• A Certificate is not available.

People who want to acquire a new language often choose Pimsleur. It uses Dr. Paul Pimsleur’s tried-and-true learning method, based on spaced repetition and remembering what you’ve learned.

Pimsleur has 30-minute lessons for each level. Most of the lessons focus on vocabulary, listening, and speaking skills. You’ll learn how to converse and feel more comfortable when talking is expected. The Korean version of Pimsleur also has reading lessons that are about an hour long and teach you the Korean alphabet. All of them are in audio format, so you must put on your headphones and start learning. It will be challenging to fall asleep if you keep hearing the same thing repeatedly until it’s drilled into your brain.

Pimsleur also uses other small tricks to make sure you’re paying attention. These include making you think of pictures and giving you little nudges to repeat what you hear. Sometimes, you’ll be asked to think of words on the spot. This can be hard, but it helps your brain stay alert and pay attention to what you’re learning.

You can buy Pimsleur Korean courses at three different levels right now. If you’re a beginner, go in order because each builds on the last.

King Sejong Institute

• Best for Remote Learning
• Price: free
• A certificate is available.

The King Sejong Institute is a well-known and well-respected place where anyone can learn about the Korean language and culture. It has always been known for its live classes at its many centers. Still, its online courses have recently become very popular with people from all over the world.

You can learn online in several different ways. You can sign up for an e-class hosted by the institute or one of its partners, apply for a time-limited course (and wait for approval), or study on your own using the institute’s many online resources.

There are beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. A lot of the information will come from the textbooks that the King Sejong Institute already has. The length of each class is different, but most of them last a few weeks.

The institute teaches not only the Korean language but also Korean culture. Everyone’s favorite K-pop music, how Korean beauty products work, the Korean martial art of taekwondo, and other things are discussed. These will make learning a language more fun and exciting.

Hills Learning

• Best for Learners who want a classroom-like setting
• Price range: $335–$379
• A certificate is not available.

Hills Learning is a certified place to learn Asian languages and has online classes. Even though it’s not an actual class, the system works much like one. You will learn Korean from a dedicated teacher and with the help of other students in your lesson. This course might be right for you if you know best in a classroom setting.

There are different levels of Korean classes, from beginners to people who are very good at the language. Each class lasts eight weeks, and each week’s lessons last 90 minutes. The school uses Korean in about 90% of each lesson, which will keep you on your toes and help you learn the language.

Having classmates and a teacher who cares about you can make a big difference in how much you want to learn. Even though everything is online, Hills Learning’s system tries to make the experience as close to being in a real classroom as possible. Each month is a “semester” of classes, so you must sign up before all the spots are taken.

Loecsen

• Best for Travelers
• Price: Free
• A Certificate is not available.

Loecsen provides an excellent introduction to the Korean language and helps you learn all the essential words and sentences right away. This is great if you’re planning a trip or want to know the basics quickly. It teaches you new words and how to say them correctly by matching words with their Korean writing, drawings, and audio.

Seventeen lesson themes cover things like medical terms and getting in trouble, as well as everyday expressions, feelings, bar orders, and directions for taxi drivers. The site makes finding and learning valid Korean words and phrases easy by listing them and explaining what they mean in English, Hangul, and Romanized Korean.

You can also test yourself on the site. After your first session, print out the list of words, study them when you have time, and then go back to the site to test yourself!

Talk to Me in Korean

• Best for those who are looking for the best value
• Price: The basic plan is free, the monthly plan is $12.99, and the yearly plan is $93.
• A Certificate is available.

This site has a good curriculum with a wide range of multimedia content that you can buy to help you learn Korean. It is divided into nine levels with 30 lessons each. Each class covers all the most important things, from must-know words and idioms to simple grammar structures and everyday phrases. Each lesson is organized by topic and takes a step-by-step approach. If you want to buy their textbooks, you can get free PDFs and practice exercises for each class.

Talk to Me in Korean also offers nine video courses on Vimeo. If you want to become fluent in conversation, you can purchase them one at a time or all nine for $19.99.

Lexis Korea

• Best for weekly learning based on a theme
• Price: Between $52 and $174 per week
• A certificate is available.

Lexis Korea is a school that has won awards for its teaching skills. It now offers a virtual version of its Korean language course on campus. These online classes, called “Untact courses,” aim to help people learning English in another country know it quickly.

There are three Untact courses: Untact Korean 25, Untact Korean 15, and Untact Weekend Korean.

• Contact Korean 25 is a full-time class where students are expected to review what they’ve learned and do their homework between classes.
• Contact Korean 15 is a part-time course that covers the language in depth. It aims to help you quickly improve your speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. You must commit to learning for four weeks but can choose which weeks to participate. Each week, the courses have a different theme, so you can choose which one to take based on its theme.
• Lastly, Untact Weekend is a once-a-week, slower version of the teachings for people with a lot going on. There is a different theme for each month.

The school understands students with different schedules, so if you’re busy but still want to learn Korean, give these classes a shot!

Yonsei University’s First Step Korean

• Best for: Beginner level
• Price: Free or $49 if you have a certificate.
• A certificate is available (paid).

Yonsei University, one of the most prestigious schools in South Korea, offers a course for people who want to learn basic Korean. This course is held on the constantly growing Coursera platform. It could be good for you if you like to learn with a teacher in a class-like setting.

The course has five lessons with four units. The lessons cover basic ideas in reading, writing, speaking, and listening, and the units have exercises to help you learn even more. You’ll start by learning the basics of the Korean alphabet. Then you’ll move on to learning basic Korean, like how to talk about dates and times and other everyday things.

The course takes about 18 hours to finish, depending on how fast you work and study. It is also top-rated and has many students and good reviews, so if you’re interested, sign up quickly!

Cyber University Korea’s Quick Korean

• Best for Listening skill
• Price: free
• A certificate is available.

The Cyber University of Korea offers a very informative course that teaches the basics of Korean. You don’t have to pay to use Quick Korean. You must sign up with your email address, and you can use the whole course for free.

There are four levels of difficulty with the content. Level one teaches you how to talk to people. The higher levels build on that foundation, so you should be able to talk freely about many different things by level four.

Because most of the content is about talking to people and is presented as a lecture, learners get a lot of practice with saying and understanding words. These are essential parts of learning a language; since it won’t cost you anything to try them out, it’s worth it!

90-Day Korean

• Best for Beginner
• Price: From free to 399 USD/year

The 90-day Korean course is based on text and sound. It is split into four parts that last 90 days each. Each module has 12 weeks of lessons, and each week has about 10–12 classes. One week’s worth of materials took about three to five hours to complete. 

It has four parts, each 90 days long or for three months. So, the whole 90-day Korean course takes a full year. During the first 90 days of the course, you will be able to:

• Talk for three minutes
• Order in a Restaurant
• How to get around
• Read and write Hangeul
• Create simple small talk

The course is mainly about three things:

• Letting you go at your own pace.
• Giving you clear goals to reach.
• Using the 80/20 rule to help you learn.

KoreanClass101

• Best for beginner to intermediate
• Price: Basic—$8/mo, $4/mo if you sign up for two years; Premium—$25/mo, $10/mo if you sign up for two years; Premium Plus—$47/mo, $23/mo if you sign up for two years.
• A certificate is not available.

Koreanclass101 has developed thousands of lessons for Korean language learners, primarily audio. It’s excellent for those who want to improve their listening. The grammar and vocabulary content is also impressive, clear, and detailed. However, finding the proper lesson at the right time can be challenging, and the lack of a clear learning path could cause problems. It’s a handy tool alongside other resources or lessons but should be used as something other than a standalone course.

KoreanClass101 is a part of the vast range of language education resources produced by the Innovative Language company. This, as the name implies, is part of the Korean catalog. It offers thousands of audio lessons, alongside some video lessons, starting at the absolute beginner level and moving up to the advanced level.

LingQ

• Best for practicing reading and listening.
• Price: Free, or membership costs $199
• A certificate is not available.

LingQ is an app that lets you read and listen to native content in a language to help you learn it. One of the best things about it is that you can automatically import your content and create new lessons. Overall, LingQ’s platform has a few bugs and can be hard to use in some places, but it’s a good deal for the price.

In addition to helping people learn a language, it lets them find a language exchange partner. Learners can practice everything they’ve learned from the app and see how it works through the exchange program with an actual native speaker. But if you need more clarification about your language skills, LingQ’s lessons will surprise you. It works on reading, writing, speaking, listening, and building a more extensive vocabulary.

This app & website is great for beginning language students who want to practice reading and listening. Of course, this will only work for some, but if you’re starting from scratch, focusing on these two things can put you in the best position to learn a language well.

Clozemaster

• Best for learning vocabulary
• Price: $8 US per month, $60 US per year & $140 US one-off lifetime subscription
• A certificate is not available.

Clozemaster shows you a sentence that is missing one word. You learn new words when you pick the right one from a list of choices. You can also test what you already know by typing in the word without looking at the other alternatives. 

In a cloze worksheet or test, you are given most of a sentence and must fill in the missing word. Filling in the blanks with the appropriate word is a way to learn, improve, or test your language skills and understanding.

It works on mobile and desktop devices and has a database of thousands of sentences. Using it regularly promises to “rapidly increase your vocabulary, improve your listening skills, and more.” To get the most out of this platform, you should be at least an advanced beginner who knows grammar and has a good set of words stored in your long-term memory.

Rocket Korean

• Best for learning the basics of the Korean language in a short amount of time (excluding reading)
• Price: For a one-time payment of $149.95, you can use Level 1—Beginner to Intermediate for the rest of your life. There are often coupons for up to $50 off this price that can be used.
• A certificate is not available.

Rocket Korean is a language program made by Rocket Languages. It teaches grammar, vocabulary, and Korean culture through lessons. The lesson starts right at the beginning of learning Hangul, and the platform has many extra learning tools, like flashcards and software that recognizes your voice.

Unlike other Rocket Languages courses, Rocket Korean only has a beginner course that takes you from beginner to intermediate. When you finish the course, you can have good conversations. The course has seven modules and a “Survival Kit” as a bonus. The “Survival Kit” has quick vocabulary lessons good for travel and other situations.

Learning Korean: How long will it take?

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Korean is one of the world’s most widely spoken languages (about 82 million speakers), and many people want to learn it. The good news is that Korean is easy to understand and can be mastered quickly.

How long it takes to learn Korean will depend on a few things.

• First, you should have some experience with the language. If you know some essential Korean words and grammar rules, it will be much easier for you to learn the language.
• Second, it will matter how much time you are willing to spend learning Korean. If you can only study a few hours a week, it will take longer than if you could check for several hours daily.
• Lastly, the time it takes you to learn Korean will also depend on how well you understand it. Some people are very good at learning new languages, while others need more time and practice.

But no matter how you learn, if you work hard and dedicate yourself, you should be able to learn Korean in a reasonable amount of time.

Language learning is a complicated process that differs for everyone and depends on many things. So, is it worth your time? Can you get somewhere in a reasonable time if you learn Korean?

Yes, that is the short answer. Although learning Korean will take you a lot of time, as you’ll see below, it’s worth it.

You can learn Hangul in about three days if you study hard for four hours or about seven days if you study for about two hours a day.

After you’ve mastered Hangul, it’s time to learn Basic Korean.

Reaching Basic Level in Korean

Like with any other language, there are different levels of learning Korean. At the beginning level, you’ll need to start learning essential vocabulary words and how Korean grammar works.

Korean grammar has some rules that need to be clarified. When you first start to learn Korean, the way sentences are put together and how verbs are changed are very different and could be hard for native English or European language speakers to understand.

The good news is that once you get used to how Korean works, you can learn the basics in about a week or, at most, a month.

It’s easy to learn and write because it has simple spelling (unlike English or French). You often don’t use the subject when you speak Korean, so your sentences are usually shorter.

Conversational level in Korean

If you studied Korean for 2 hours every day for 90 days, you could hold a 3-minute conversation in Korean.

Depending on how often you study, it will take three to six months to learn enough Korean to talk easily at this level. Between 1500 and 2000 words would be on your list of Korean words to know.

Knowing how to spell Korean and grasp basic grammar well is essential. If you have this foundation, moving forward will be easy.

Intermediate level in Korean

You learn more about speaking Korean at the intermediate level than grammar rules and other things you may have focused on in earlier levels.

By the middle of the intermediate level, it’s usually easier to understand the grammar rules. You should now have the skills you need to take the TOPIK test, the Korean proficiency test.

Now, you can understand Korean news, social issues, and abstract ideas. You will not only know a lot about Korean society and culture, but you will also be able to understand essential idioms and other parts of Korean culture.

Suppose you want to learn Korean at an intermediate level. In that case, it will take you anywhere from one to two years of consistent study, which is about 600 hours.

Fluent level in Korean

Getting to this level will take a lot of hard work and dedication. It could take at least a few years, but how fast you learn will depend on how well you study and learn languages.

Still, if you start from scratch, you should spend at least 1,500 hours learning Korean before you can speak it fluently.

Generally, how long will it take from beginner to advanced level?

When people want to know how long it takes to learn a second language, they often look at United States Foreign Service Institute (FSI) estimates. The FSI says that to go from knowing nothing about Korean to being an advanced speaker, you need about 2200 hours of study or 88 weeks of hard work.

Final thought

As you can see, there are many good reasons why learning Korean is easier than you might think. So, if you’ve been thinking about learning Korean, you don’t need to be scared. Just start! You can read, write, and speak Korean like a pro before you know it!

When it comes to learning Korean, you can do so many things. With this information, you should feel better about learning Korean. Remember that online courses are the best way to learn a new language in this digital era. Find a perfect course for you and start learning Korean right away.