Short Stories in Korean for Intermediate Learners

Badly written

Badly written stories with cultural mistakes

Just read any other graded reader instead of this

Let's start by the content of the book. It's centered around 8 short stories, each one separated in three chapters, with some vocab, a chapter summary and some comprehension questions. It seems like a good structure, but the stories are actually incredibly boring. The first one is slightly better, but after that, the novelty factor wears off and you're just left with these badly written short stories.

What makes it all worse is the grammar. I don't even how they managed it, but there is only beginner level grammar in this book that's supposed to be B1/B2. And it's not even interesting sentences with that grammar, these are the most straightforward simple sentences that could possibly be made. You could read any beginner level graded reader and the sentence structure would still be more interesting. It's also extremely unnatural sentences, and it's frankly a pain to read. It's like reading the most basic example sentence a couple hundred times in a row, just with some of the vocab varying.

Now, onto the vocab. The vocab used, again, doesn't match B1/B2 at all. It's mostly beginner vocab, with a couple more intermediate words translated. What's annoying is that they aren't translated on the same page as the word is in, so you have to go find the vocab list at the end of the chapter everytime you need to look up something.

The only use for this book would maybe be as a ressource if you've never read anything in Korean and don't really understand how sentences work. That was the case for me when I initially bought this book, but I quickly discovered that there are so many better ressources out there. You'd really be better off starting with the 두루책방 graded readers or the beginner darakwon graded readers (토끼전 and 콩쥐팥쥐전). Plus that way you'd get the audio for free, because for this one you have to buy it separately. And once you've gone through those, then reading through this is going to become almost painful because of the oversimplified sentences.

I Hate-Read This So You Don’t Have To

Pros

• ...

Cons

• It is written by a non-native speaker with only a very basic grasp of the language and apparently no knowledge of Korean culture. This seems on brand for an internet polyglot.
• The suggested level of B1-B2 (TOPIK 3-4) isn’t at all accurate. The sentences are very simple and repetitive. For example: “My name is [name]. I am a [occupation]. I am [age] years old. I have [colour] hair. I am [height]cm tall.” and so on, for a whole paragraph, and then repeating for each member of the family. It’s definitely not an intermediate resource; learners at TOPIK 1 level could read it quite comfortably.
• These are not original Korean stories, but translations (presumably from English), with minor details, such as names and places, changed to localise it. This is very apparent when you come across a scene such as a Korean greeting someone they are meeting for the first time with a kiss on both cheeks, which makes it seem like the original story was targeted at learners of Romance languages.
• The stories are boring, and don’t hold your attention. This is exacerbated by the simplistic, repetitive grammar. The last graded reader I read contained a story where an elderly lady gave birth to a giant snake; just because a book is aimed at lower levels doesn’t mean it has to be dull.
• You have to buy the audio separately. I think every other graded reader (not just Korean) I’ve ever come across provides the accompanying audio for free, so this seems absurd, especially considering the quality of the book.

I could go on, but you get the idea. It was evident this wasn’t going to be a useful resource from the first couple of pages, but I forced myself to continue reading just for the sake of finishing it. (Side note: I hate the font.)

Although Korean doesn’t have a huge choice when it comes to graded readers, the ones that are available are generally high-quality and enjoyable. Obviously, this book isn’t one of them. I wouldn’t recommend this reader to anyone, as it’s merely a cash grab which won’t help you learn Korean at all.

Now I’m going to toss this book in the recycling and let’s never speak of it again.