Learn Korean online: the best ways for beginners to start

Start with Hangeul, the Korean alphabet. It is built from 24 basic consonants and vowels, and each syllable is written as a block with an initial sound, a medial vowel and sometimes a final consonant. Hangeul Master is a whole workbook on it.

Once you can read Hangeul, pick one main course and add a dictionary. Talk To Me In Korean suits you if you want a long lesson path, and the King Sejong Institute Foundation's sites if you'd like its own textbooks and a level test.

Talk To Me In Korean's course library has more than 1,700 lessons on web and mobile, grouped into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced levels, and you can download the full roadmap as a PDF. Every lesson follows the same four steps: warm-up, lesson, speaking practice and review quiz.

It's a paid subscription, but you can try the first lesson of Core Grammar 1 free, and the Standard plan comes with a 7-day free trial that you can cancel in a few clicks. Not sure where to begin? TTMIK has a 3-minute level test, and its Bootcamp programs add a structured study schedule with assignments and deadlines. TTMIK Books also publishes Hangeul Master, the workbook in our picks.

Courses and books teach you to read and understand, but speaking takes a real conversation. On italki or Preply you book live video lessons with a Korean tutor: filter by schedule, the languages they speak and the kind of lesson (beginner, conversation, TOPIK or business), watch their intro video, then start with a trial lesson.

One lesson a week alongside a course is enough to start. Ask your tutor to use the course you are already following, so each lesson practises what you studied that week.

The King Sejong Institute Foundation, which runs King Sejong Institutes in Asia, Europe, the Americas, Africa and Oceania, has two learning sites. Nuri King Sejong Institute is a materials portal with textbooks by level, grammar quizzes, speaking and writing practice, AI self-study and a Korean level test. Online King Sejong Institute is a course platform: self-study video courses plus formats with live Zoom classes, assignments and a final test, with a course filter in 22 languages.

The National Institute of Korean Language runs KRDict, the Basic Korean Dictionary. Search a word and you get definitions in English, or in one of ten other languages, and a recorded pronunciation, which makes it a handy companion to any course.

When you want a target, TOPIK is Korea's official Korean proficiency test, administered by the National Institute for International Education (NIIED). TOPIK I covers levels 1 and 2, and TOPIK II covers levels 3 to 6. Scores are valid for two years from the score announcement and are used for Korean university admissions, jobs at companies and public institutions in Korea and abroad, visas and the Global Korean Scholarship (GKS) program.

As of October 2026, the TOPIK website lists paper-based (PBT), internet-based (IBT) and TOPIK Speaking sessions. Outside Korea, registration dates can differ from the schedule on the site, so check with your local TOPIK administering agency.

For practice between lessons, our Word of the Day page gives one word from the learners' dictionary with its meaning, pronunciation audio and an example sentence, and our Language page has survival phrases with romanization and recordings. The Tuttle flash cards work the same way offline.