up103
Start Learning Korean Occasional notes on studying Korean and building up103.
We measured grammar level, speech rate, and vocabulary variety across 302 videos from 22 Korean CI YouTube channels, with quick picks for what to watch by what you're after.
Chuseok lands on 25 September 2026, and the same greeting mistake is about to fill everyone's texts again — the fix is one verb's worth of grammar that carries past the holiday.
The fidget-toy boom filled Korean shopping copy with texture words. 말랑말랑 and 물렁물렁 are the same texture at two different settings, and the setting is the vowel.
The end-of-summer challenge put 수고했어 in every caption. The same verb is the one Korea's own etiquette standard tells you not to aim upward.
A meme put 누가 돌아왔게 in every Korean feed this summer. The 게 on the end is a sentence ending, not the 게 of 예쁘게 — and Korean has five of them.
The keyring boom put 백꾸 in every shopping caption. The 꾸 behind it is a word-building rule you can run on words nobody has coined yet.
We tagged every spoken line in 24 released TOPIK listening papers. TOPIK II barely adds new grammar — it adds two and a half times more Korean per paper.
Korea added a top-tier heat alert this summer. The words around it are a small, rigid system — learn it once and you can read every hazard alert for good.
Listening was the skill that stayed behind — until I made my own study notes the source of my listening material.