Kkaebi’s Tome · A Korean textbook for manhwa readers

It’s 2 a.m., the plot has just exploded, and the next chapter says translation on hiatus.

The Korean original is right there, hundreds of chapters of it, and you can’t read a single letter.

Two in the morning, in a dark bedroom: Mia slumps over her desk, her cheek on her folded arms and her teary eyes still on her laptop.

[띠링!]
[독자님의 소원이 접수되었습니다.][Dear Reader, your wish has been received.]

This book is for you. You don’t need any Korean to start. If you know what a regressor is, you’re already overqualified.

Running through its lessons is a webnovel. Mia, a fan a lot like you, opens the Korean raw of her favorite novel, makes a wish, and wakes up inside the story as an extra who was never supposed to be there. Each lesson’s reading is the next chapter of her story, so the novel grows as your Korean does. The story is original, and it has a real ending. No hiatus, no dropped translation.

제11과 Lesson 11

Every word is one tap away.

Mia, new to the novel’s Seoul, walks into a convenience store. Tap any underlined word to see what it means, the way you can on every page of the book.

!

Welcome!

Mia had exactly one Korean sentence ready. She used it.
!

I am Mia!
…? ?

…Sorry? A lost child?

Mia would find out later that 미아 is also the Korean word for a lost child.
…
.

.

Oh… I’m Hana. This is a convenience store.

You’ll read this scene yourself in Lesson 11, right after the Hangeul lessons.

Five genres, and the Korean each one is written in.

Mia’s novel changes genre with every arc, so each Part of the book drops her into a new world: hunters, romance fantasy, a regression thriller, murim and a palace drama. You learn the Korean each genre uses, from System windows to court speech.

Late at night in a tiny studio, Mia sits up on her floor mattress, staring at the air above her, while Kkaebi points at it and Hana, eating ramyeon, can’t see him. A huge blue Gate glows in the sky outside.

[!]
[ .]

제1부 Part 1

튜토리얼

The Tutorial

헌터물 · A hunter novel

Mia wakes up inside her favorite hunter novel as an extra who was never in it: no skills, no money, and Gates opening in the sky over Seoul. Her new friend Hana can’t see Kkaebi, and thinks Mia is talking to the fridge.

“A quest has appeared.”

Mia had read that line in a hundred translated webnovels, usually at two in the morning, but never floating a foot from her nose.

In English, quests “appear”. In Korean, they 발생하다, “occur”, like an accident or a storm.

이번 부의 목표 · Goal: You’ll be able to read short hunter-novel scenes: status windows, quests and simple past-tense narration.
보스 보상 · Boss reward: [튜토리얼 클리어] The title “Tutorial Cleared” for your status window

In a white-marble throne room, Mia bows stiffly from the waist, shouting her greeting, while Romina, low in her curtsy with an open black fan, looks up at her in alarm. The Emperor watches from his golden throne, and Kkaebi laughs upside down overhead.

제2부 Part 2

독살 엔딩을 피하는 법

How to Dodge the Poison Ending

로판 · A romance fantasy

Mia lands in a romance-fantasy empire of rose gardens, ballrooms and very dangerous tea, as the foreign guest of Romina, the villainess. In the original, Romina’s story ends with poison at a tea party, and Mia would like a different ending. First, though, she has to meet the Emperor, still in her sweater vest.

“I greet the Sun of the Empire!!”

Everyone bowed their heads. Everyone but me.

제국의 태양을 뵙습니다, “I see the Sun of the Empire”, is how a romance-fantasy court says hello. Nobody looks straight at the sun, so you bow.

이번 부의 목표 · Goal: You’ll be able to read romance-fantasy descriptions, noble titles and honorifics, and passive-aggressive tea-party Korean.
보스 보상 · Boss reward: [원작 파괴자] The title “Breaker of the Original” for your status window

In a small university dorm room, Mia stares out of the open window at a sunny campus, while Kkaebi floats in with a wave.

10년 .

제3부 Part 3

다시, 그날로

Back to That Day

회귀물 · A regression story

Mia wakes up in a university dorm, ten years in the past and a week before the campus festival. The System makes her an exchange student, and her sweater vest, as Kkaebi points out, can’t be changed.

“I opened my eyes, and it was ten years ago.”

Every regression novel begins with some version of that sentence. Someone opens their eyes, and it’s ten years ago, or the first day of high school, or the morning everything went wrong.

-(으)니 joins two halves. In the first, someone does something small: opens their eyes, looks, goes somewhere. The second half is what that turned up, and it’s the news: 눈을 뜨니 기숙사였다, “I opened my eyes, and I was in a dorm.”

이번 부의 목표 · Goal: You’ll be able to read untagged dialogue, rumors and quotes, chat rooms and comment sections.
보스 보상 · Boss reward: [결말을 바꾼 자] The title “The One Who Changed the Ending” for your status window

In a bamboo forest, Mia sits on the fallen leaves with her hands up and a nervous smile. The bandits around her, blades out, have all turned to gape at Cheong-un, a white-haired boy with a staff, shouting down at them from a mossy rock.

제4부 Part 4

강호에 떨어지다

Fallen into the Martial World

무협 · A murim novel

Mia opens her eyes in the martial world of murim novels, in a bamboo forest, with bandits’ blades pointed at her. The help that arrives is ten years old: a boy who talks like an ancient grandmaster, because he is one.

“Do you know who this old man is?!”

Mia didn’t know, and neither did the bandits.

노부 is an old man’s dignified “I”.

이번 부의 목표 · Goal: You’ll be able to read archaic speech, murim terms, Sino-Korean compounds and fight scenes.
보스 보상 · Boss reward: [천하제일 독자] The title “Greatest Reader Under Heaven” for your status window

At night, in a palace pavilion by a lotus pond, Mia bows with her forehead to the floor, dripping wet, while three court ladies hide their laughter behind their sleeves and Kkaebi covers his face.

제5부 Part 5

궁의 밤

Night in the Palace

사극 · A historical drama

A Joseon palace drama, all moonlit courtyards, paper lanterns and very deep bows. Mia drops out of the night sky into a palace pond, is hauled out dripping, and bows in the only court Korean she knows, from a hundred historical dramas watched with subtitles.

“Your Majesty’s grace overwhelms me!”

Everyone in that garden was bowing, and not only with their heads.

Say 성은이 망극하옵니다 to a friend who buys you lunch, and you’ll get a laugh.

이번 부의 목표 · Goal: You’ll be able to read court speech, literary narration, flashbacks and long chapters.
보스 보상 · Boss reward: [궁중 역관] The title “Royal Interpreter” for your status window

Chibi Mia, a coffee can in her hands, stares in horror at a floating blue window as a tiny ghost of her soul drifts out of her mouth.

[]

이름: 미아

직업: 엑스트라

레벨: 1

칭호: 한글 해독자

스킬: 한글 (Lv.1)

무기: 없음

돈: 없음

. . … . A weapon? I don’t have one. Money? I don’t have any. A home… I don’t have one.

What’s inside

A real textbook, with a novel running through it.

Grammar explained properly, exercises that tell you why, appendices and an answer key, like a good paper textbook.

64 lessons, from your first Hangeul letter to pages that look and read like the real thing.
53 chapters of Mia’s story that you read in Korean, one in every lesson from Lesson 11 on, with scenes drawn as manhwa.
1,149 words you’ll actually see in manhwa and webnovels, each one added to your review deck as you meet it. A review takes a few minutes, and it’s what makes them stick.
149 core grammar patterns: what each looks like, what it means, and how to spot it on a busy page.

[Look Up] Every word and pattern in the book, searchable in Korean or English. Type a word the way you saw it, and Look Up finds it.
[Status] Your own status window, like Mia’s: your level, the words you’ve learned, your titles. The numbers only ever go up.

Three to five months to reading manhwa in Korean.

Finish this book, which takes about three to five months at a few lessons a week, and you’ll be able to read manhwa in Korean. You’ll also be able to open the webnovels many of them are based on, and read those with a pop-up dictionary at your side.
From the book’s preface

Chibi Kkaebi proudly unrolls a map scroll much longer than he is, while chibi Mia squints at it.

I still can’t read it.

Not yet.

Lesson 10, the end of the Prologue: you can sound out any Korean word, plus status windows, names and sound effects. Slowly at first.
Lesson 33, the end of Part 2: enough everyday Korean to try a few pages of a manhwa you’ve already read in English.
Lesson 59, the end of Part 5: every way of speaking a webnovel can throw at you, from group chats to palace speech.
Lesson 62: the final chapter Mia wished for, a full-length episode in real webnovel format.

메인 퀘스트 · Main quest

[최종화를 읽으십시오.]Read the final chapter.

[보상: 결말, 그리고 집으로 가는 길]Reward: the ending, and the way home

[제한 시간: 없음]Time limit: none

Lessons take ten to fifteen minutes at the start and grow to about fifty by the end. If life gets busy and you disappear for a month, the book will be right here when you’re back. There are no streaks to break and no hearts to lose.

Start the story free. Buy the book once.

Free

Lesson 0, where Mia wakes up inside the novel, Kkaebi shows you how Korean works and the main quest begins; and Appendix A, Hangeul and its sounds. The Preface, Meet the Cast and Look Up are free too.

The whole book

$24.99 once

Lessons 1–63: the rest of the Prologue, where you learn to read Hangeul, then Mia’s story to its ending, told in Korean from Lesson 11; Appendices B–J, from verbs and speech levels to reading a webnovel page; the Afterword; and every lesson’s translations and answers. No subscription and no ads. It unlocks the book on every iPhone and iPad signed in to your Apple Account, and Family Sharing works.

Good to know

Do I need to know any Korean?

None at all. The Prologue starts with the alphabet, one letter at a time, and the story begins in English with Korean sprinkled in. By Lesson 11 you’re reading it in Korean.

Which devices does it run on?

iPhone and iPad. There’s no Android or web version yet.

Is it a subscription?

No. The book’s opening, Lesson 0, is free, and the whole book is one purchase of $24.99 in the US (the App Store shows the price in your own currency). No ads, no account to make.

Will my progress follow me to my iPad?

Yes, if you turn on Sync with iCloud in the app’s Settings. Your progress goes through your own iCloud account, and nothing goes to us.

Does it work offline?

Yes. The whole book lives on your device, so you can read on a plane or on a train with no signal.

Are the stories and characters original?

Yes, every one of them. No text from real webnovels or manhwa is reproduced. The illustrations contain no lettering, so every Hangeul character you see is genuine text.

Who is Kkaebi?

A tiny 도깨비, a goblin from Korean folklore, who runs the System in Mia’s novel. He drills her on Hangeul and is petty with her, but always sweet to you, the reader.

Something’s wrong, or I have an idea.

Write to hello@kkaebistome.com. We read every message. More help is on the support page.