Want to become fluent in Korean?
I’ll show you the way towards fluency.
Hi, my name is Dominic, and I created the Become Korean Fluent website.
I began my Korean language journey after finishing a Korean drama in 2011. In case you’re wondering, the drama that inspired me is My Girlfriend is a Gumiho.
The show gave me a hangover for such a long time that I ended up replaying some episodes, listening to the soundtrack, feeling lovesick, and I even teared up every time I remember the sad scenes.
But more importantly, it paved my way into the world of Korean!
I started to delve deep into the many aspects of Korean culture, including food, music, people, and of course, the Korean language. I began learning Korean by first learning their alphabet, which is called Hangul.
My life had changed ever since mastering Hangul as I started to read everything that’s written in Korean wherever I go. I started slow, then eventually I picked up speed as I gain more exposure.
However, life intervened. I was in college back then and had to get serious with my studies all the way to my first job after graduation.
But after working for one year at my job, I made a career shift and decided I will become a digital nomad. That is, being able to work from anywhere choosing whatever schedule I want. It’s because of this new lifestyle that I gained the free time to pursue Korean again on top of my online work.
I resumed learning Korean in 2018, starting for free with a simple app named Duolingo (the green owl). At first I began by establishing consistency – I played with it every single day for 1,000 days straight until I terminated the streak on purpose.
I never expected Duo to take me to Korean mastery, it’s just that I was afraid to lose my streak. But during those 1,000 days I worked to maintain, I was supplementing my learning with various resources, including courses, apps, podcasts, and videos.
Then in 2019, I passed TOPIK Level 2 at exactly the score needed to reach it. This is Korea’s officially recognized proficiency exam in Korean which has 6 levels in total. I did this while only studying on my own and using mostly the Internet and its free resources.
At present, I’m focused on immersing more on native Korean content while continually growing my Korean skills. Become Korean Fluent serves as the “manifesto” of my continuous learning pursuit.
About Learning Korean
It’s been over a decade since starting my Korean journey and I still wouldn’t call myself fluent. With so many starts and stops, I’d like to think I’m a failure in this target language.
But surprisingly, I never forgot my Korean.
I may forget a couple hundred words along the way, but I find myself able to bounce back better. I could even say that my memory of the language became stronger than before.
At present, I’m finding it easier to consume Korean content and tolerate not being able to understand everything.
This leads me to believe that anyone can learn Korean. It may be incredibly difficult especially if English is your native language, but it’s not impossible to acquire. As long as you remain consistent and keep going in the face of difficulties, sooner or later you will see your Korean improve.
Because of Korean, I discovered my general learning style when it comes to learning languages: consume a ton of comprehensible input in the target language.
Once you’re able to get Hangul and some basic grammar out of the way, the idea is to just keep immersing in Korean content until you get good and understand it fast.
You don’t even have to go to Korea to be able to immerse – you can do it online from the comfort of your own home. That is exactly what I do at present.
There are no shortcuts – even those polyglot influencers you encounter online have to put in the work and diligently attend to their target language every day.
Guiding You to Korean Fluency
Become Korean Fluent will guide you towards fluency in Korean.
Allow me to show you the path even if you’re just a beginner.
As I’ve mentioned, once you’ve learned the basics (i.e. vocabulary, grammar, alphabet), the goal is to immerse in as much Korean as possible.
In saying that, I believe language learning is more of a “journey” than a destination. You are never really finished with learning as there’s always a lot to learn.
As we become fluent in Korean (myself included), the more avenues we’ll find for further learning. My website will show you the way to those places.
Treat Become Korean Fluent as your “companion” – a friend guiding you in your Korean journey.
Soon, I’ll be putting up a free course which you can begin with as a complete beginner. For now, feel free to explore the website starting with my blog.
To our Korean fluency,
Dominic