Once Upon a Time in Korea: An Elementary Reader

by In Ku Kim-Marshall

2006 editorial review in Language Link: Foreign Language Resources for Teachers and Librarians: "This book is designed for anyone who has some Korean vocabulary and is familiar with the basic grammar. It provides delightful and easy short stories rewritten in simple sentences and using carefully selected sets of basic vocabulary, without sacrificing original meanings. The book is beautifully illustrated, and each story is accompanied by a vocabulary list in English, and cultural notes are included with some of the stories."

Korean/English

196 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Eman Aboulsaad]

First book in Korean: Check :)

[브리기 · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Korean language skills has been improved a lot since I started to read these stories.
It took me a while as I was making vocab and grammar notes during the most of it.
On one hand I found that a lot of the words used are very complicated and not useful for today's everyday speaking, but I found it an interesting cultural insight.

[Tae]

tis is a very useful book

[Taren · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a serious shortage of Korean readers for learners of the Korean language. I wasn't even able to find this book in Korea. I'm glad I ordered it though. It was so helpful to be able to read simple stories completely in Korean. This book is good for beginners as there are many (literally a hundred or so) footnote translations for each story. They are all listed at the end of the story rather on the same page as the word, which has its pros and cons. It's a little annoying to flip back and forth if there's a lot of words you don't know, but at the same time, it feels great if you're reading a story for the 4th time and only have to flip to the back once or twice. There are 23 folktales in this book, so it took me quite a while to get through. They are all traditional folktales that most Koreans will have heard of, but I was only familiar with two of them, so it made for an entertaining read. I highly recommend this for anyone looking to improve their Korean reading skills. I'm looking forward to conquering the Intermediate one next.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are trying to teach others Korean/Hangul the intro helps with how to plan your methods of attack. As for learning yourself, I would say not bad if you have a foundation in the alphabet.

This book is filled with stories from myths and legends of Korea with some Culture notes making it fun to read. After the end of each story there is a vocab list of the words used in the story to put in your own vocabulary if you might you didn't know them already. Also at the end of the book there is a small list of phrases and a list of irregular verbs and how to use them.

I think this is a great book to continue on your studies in Korean/Hangul being that the stories are simplified to an easy reader level and completely in Korean/Hangul with only notes written in English, making you HAVE to use your Korean to read the stories!