I've Been Learning Korean for Months. Here's Why I'm Finally Getting Serious.
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The other day, I was about to watch a StarCraft match — something I either watch with Spanish or English commentary — when it turned out to be the Korean broadcast instead. I watched only for a few minutes and I felt something deep inside me and thought: I really should be watching this in Korean.
A fire was lit in my heart.
I’ve been a fan of StarCraft since I was a teenager and have been following the pro scene regularly since around 2008/2009. ASL season 21 is currently in full swing — the most prestigious tournament in Korean StarCraft Broodwar that comes around twice a year. It's always an exciting time and I take it as an opportunity to sharpen my Spanish listening skills while enjoying something I love. But this time things felt different.
StarCraft isn’t just a game or an E-sport in South Korea, it’s a cultural phenomenon. It has become synonymous with the country and is considered the unofficial national sport. I’ve met quite a few Korean tourists over the years, and have yet to meet one who doesn’t know the names of the top players.
Watching it in Spanish has been great, and it's definitely improved for my listening skills. But Korean is where the heart of competitive StarCraft truly lives, and I think it's time I started experiencing it that way.
Earlier this week, I had a Spanish conversation with Langua’s AI. I had set up this scenario where we roleplayed as two travelers exploring the streets of Seoul, Korea — themed coffee shops, side streets, catching the subway, the whole thing. It was such an engaging conversation and I could literally picture myself there in South Korea. It only added fuel to my fire.
My interest in Korean culture has been there for a long time. I love the food, the language, Korean drama and comedy shows, and the levels of honor in the culture fascinates me. And of course — StarCraft. My passion for Korean culture is obviously not going anywhere, so it's time to finally do something about it.
Where My Korean is at Right Now
So here I am on the couch in the evenings, a cup of Yorkshire tea in my hand, watching this game — and feeling this urgency build inside of me to finally start taking Korean seriously.
I started learning Korean from scratch just before Christmas, so I’m around 3 months in. I started deliberately slowly, which was around 30 minutes a day on average. There was a lot going on and I didn’t want to spread myself too thin, which was the right call at the time. But the thing is: I’ve had that same relaxed pace ever since and for the past month. And even though I have still learned daily, it’s been more like 5-10 minutes on most days — and it shows. I have gotten some basics down, learned enough phrases to make a waitress at a Korean restaurant light up — but I’m still very much a beginner.
I know what it actually takes to get to a level where you can immerse in native content in a language like Korean. Because I’ve done it in Cantonese. And I can tell you that it’s a lot more than a language like Spanish, and certainly a lot more than 5 minutes a day.
This is also the first StarCraft tournament I've watched since I started learning Korean. So for the first time, I can catch the occasional word or ending here and there. It’s still very little, but it's enough to make me hungry for more. Because there’s this sense of familiarity with a language that used to be complete gibberish.
But now, the honeymoon phase with Korean has worn off over the past month or so. That initial excitement where everything feels fresh and motivating — that’s pretty much gone. This is exactly the stage where most people quietly put the language down and never pick it up again. And it’s hard to be excited about something you only do for a few minutes a day. You need more momentum.
If you're in the same place right now: the early excitement has faded and you find yourself distracted by other things — that feeling doesn't mean the language isn't for you. It might just mean you haven't connected with your why deeply enough yet.
And once you build a solid daily routine and start seeing actual results the motivation stops being something you have to whip up. It starts feeding itself. You don't dread your study time. You look forward to it. An hour a day stops feeling like discipline and starts feeling like the best part of your day.
The hard part is building the runway. Once you're in the air, the language starts carrying you.
The Big Mistake Most Beginners Make
Finding a good beginner’s resource is key when starting a new language. But the mistake most beginners make is treating their beginner course as the destination, when it’s really just the launching pad.
As for me, I chose to use Rocket Korean to start my journey. It has 87 lessons, which totals 120 hours of lesson time, teaching you the grammar and hangul foundations, culture, while being interactive and a big emphasis on speaking. Plus, it has listening exercises and interactive roleplay conversations with speech recognition built in. I think it’s genuinely one of the best resources for Korean for beginners out there, and definitely enough to keep you busy for a while.
But here’s the thing: after finishing all of that, I’ve still only scratched the surface of Korean. That’s not a criticism of Rocket — I’ve really enjoyed it and it has been a great way to get my feet wet — but it’s just the reality of what a beginner course can and can’t do for you. And for English speakers, Korean is one of the most challenging languages out there, so it’s going to take way more than 120 hours to get to a place where you can do anything meaningful in the language.
This might seem like I'm saying Korean is hard. I don't believe that (‘hard’, in my view, has more to do unrealistic expectations and negative self-talk). I believe it takes time and commitment, which are very different things. The harder thing is looking back ten years from now wishing you'd started.
(FYI, Rocket Languages currently has an Easter Sale with 60% off all courses until April 5th — if you've been considering it, now is a good time.)
What I'm Planning to Do After Rocket Languages
One thing I’ve learned from learning several languages is that it helps enormously to know what you’re doing after your beginner course — before you finish it. It helps you to see your learning longterm, it eliminates getting stuck thinking: now what? And finishing it becomes a reward in and of itself. Something to look forward to with the next chapter of your learning waiting for you.
I've actually been thinking and daydreaming about this quite a bit. And because I've been through this process before in Cantonese, Finnish, and Spanish, I have a pretty clear sense of what the best apps for learning Korean are at this stage, what I enjoy, and what I want my Korean learning routine to actually feel like. So if you’ve been wondering how to learn Korean beyond your beginner course or app, here's what I'm planning.
Speak — building speaking patterns from day one
When I covered Speak in my roundup of the top 5 AI speaking apps, I was genuinely blown away — so I've been using it daily for Spanish ever since. I even tried the Speak app for Korean (though only briefly) and the beginner material was excellent.
It’s like a mix of Pimsleur and Glossika — two apps I've used across multiple languages — but with AI that targets your specific mistakes, built-in AI conversation practice, and an even more enjoyable user experience than either. The whole thing is built around getting you to speak lots of sentences using useful language patterns, so you're absorbing grammar naturally just by doing the exercises and practicing different conversation scenarios. Simple, effective, and very satisfying to use.
I can't wait to add this to my Korean routine once I finish Rocket. I wish I could start already, but I know spreading myself too thin never ends well — so that’s why avoided the temptation. Finishing Rocket first is my goal, and starting Speak is the reward.
If you want to get a head start on me in Speak’s Korean — you can try Speak free for 7 days and see what I mean.
Lingopie — TV immersion that actually works for beginners
Speak is great for building speaking patterns but alone it won’t get me to the point of understanding native Korean TV — and that’s actually my number one goal right now, even ahead of speaking. I want to sit down with a cup of tea, enjoy a StarCraft game, and follow what the commentators are saying with ease. And for that, I need serious Korean listening practice to authentic content.
I used Lingopie regularly for Spanish for a long time but it's been sitting on the shelf since I got deep into Storylearning’s Uncovered courses. I've been wanting to bring it back into my routine— and Korean feels like exactly the right reason to do so. I love Korean drama and comedy and I'd like to watch more of it in the actual language.
And I've already seen what focused TV-based listening practice can do. The watching strategy I developed for Cantonese — combining freeflow watching with intensive listening and sentence mining while watching a Disney Plus show — made a night and day difference to my listening comprehension (I wrote about that process in detail here if you're curious.) Lingopie is actually perfect for doing the same thing with Korean, and actually easier, since everything is integrated: instant lookups, auto-pause, slowdown, and one-click flashcard creation all in one place. No external tools needed.
Yesterday, I was browsing through the Lingopie Korean library and I was excited to see that lots of new shows had been added. There were plenty of short-form web series in the 3-5 minute range. These will be perfect for my level since they are much shorter than the typical 20-minute sitcoms. I've already started hearting shows, adding them to my watchlist that’s ready and waiting for me once I finish Rocket Languages.
You can get an extra 10% off Lingopie through my exclusive Lingtuitive link — that's on top of whatever discount is already on each plan, and it includes a 7-day free trial.
Already adding shows to my Lingopie Korean library. Nerd-Ult caught my eye immediately — 12 episodes, 5 minutes each. It’s labeled Intermediate — but that’s what the watching strategies I’ll be using are for.
What I'm Deliberately Leaving Out (For Now)
Knowing what you're not doing is just as important as knowing what you are doing. It removes the temptation to add one more thing — which makes your learning scattered and ineffective, rather than focused and seeing results. Different resources work best at different stages. Leaving something out now doesn't mean missing out — it actually means the opposite.
LingQ has been by far my most used language app. I’ve used it extensively, reading 40-50+ books across three languages. I’ve literally used it every day for six plus years for Finnish, Cantonese, and Spanish. So obviously it would make sense to just add it to my Korean learning, right? Not quite yet. I want to focus my Korean on Speak and Lingopie though LingQ will almost certainly come into my Korean journey at some point. Especially when I want to read more extensively.
Reading is another thing I’m not focusing on right now. Even though Hangul is actually one of the easier writing systems to pick up (unlike Chinese characters, which takes a long time before you can read comfortably) — my priority is being able to follow a StarCraft commentary, Korean dramas and comedies, not reading. That said, I’ll add it when it makes sense. I might even weave it into my learning if it feels natural do so without getting distracted (when interacting with the subtitles in Lingopie, for example).
Online lessons is another thing I’m leaving out for now, though I’m not rigid about it. I took weekly lessons for the first year of Cantonese and it made a huge impact on my learning and confidence. So while I will be focused on building listening and speaking patterns first, I also won’t hesitate to head over to LanguaTalk to book a lesson if I crave human interaction and want to test and further develop my speaking skills in a conversational lesson setting. Sometimes speaking to a real native speaker is the best thing you can do for your motivation.
The Honest Truth About the Timeline
I’m not going to pretend Korean will come quickly. Having learned Finnish and Cantonese — two of the most challenging languages out there — I know there are no shortcuts to solid language ability. You need tons of hours and it will probably be years before I can sit down and follow a StarCraft match in Korean the way I can in Spanish.
But here’s the thing — the journey itself is worth it. Not just the destination.
There are so many special moments that happen along the way, not just when you reach fluency. I still remember my first 60-minute Cantonese lesson that was purely in Cantonese, which happened somewhere in my first year of learning. It was challenging, but I did it. That feeling was unforgettable. And eight years later, I'm still collecting moments like that. Just the other day I went to IKEA in Sweden, and all of a sudden I heard Cantonese nearby and ended up talking with a group of Hong Kongers for 15-20 minutes. We exchanged contacts, and they invited me to hang out next time I'm in Hong Kong — even to go to Guangzhou, China together for what they promised was the best dim sum there is.
These are just two examples of literally countless special moments that I’ve had on my language learning journey. And you have many that await you, long before you even reach fluency.
And I know I will have these moments in Korean too. I just need to stop crawling and start walking.
My Commitment
This isn't about suddenly going from 5-10 minutes a day to some intense 4-hour study marathon. That might guarantee fast progress, but it also guarantees fast burnout. My new daily goal is 30 minutes dedicated to learning Korean — enough to see progress without overwhelming everything else I have going on. I'll increase it when it feels right and natural to do so.
But more than a time goal, this is a commitment to Korean itself — to the language and the culture behind it. The excitement of a new challenge fades after a few months. What doesn't fade is a genuine passion for a culture that has been with me for over twenty years. That’s not going anywhere. I literally wrote 'learn Korean' on a dreams list about fifteen years ago.
So I'd love for you to come along on this Korean journey. And keep me accountable too! I'll be posting updates along the way — the wins, the frustrations, the moments where it all starts clicking, and personal stories. When I first started learning languages, that's exactly the kind of content I craved. It’s why I started this blog.
Alright. Time to go blast through some more Rocket Korean lessons.
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