Advanced stories
Original Korean stories written for this level, with comprehension questions.
Short stories
36 original stories written for this level, each with a comprehension check.
벽 너머의 기침
A night-shift warehouse worker in a tiny Sillim-dong rooming house has never seen his neighbour's face, only heard his cough every morning, until one morning the cough stops.
세 권의 장부
Sent home to Daegu to close the family fabric shop in Seomun Market, a Seoul designer finds three account books kept by three generations of women.
1407호의 의자
An accountant who can't sleep without pills hears a chair scrape in the empty officetel next door at exactly three every morning.
느린 사람
The day after quitting her job, a woman sets off on the long ridge walk across Jirisan with a schedule timed to the minute, and gets stuck behind a very slow old man.
두 줄짜리 정정 보도
A young online reporter is told to publish a viral video accusing a soup restaurant of reusing leftovers within thirty minutes, and she notices something odd in the footage.
법인카드의 행방
Three weeks into his first job, a new employee is told the team's company card has gone missing after Friday's dinner, and his name is the last one in the log.
두루미를 세는 사람
A data analyst goes home to Suncheon to confront her father, a retired maths teacher whose phone calls are all about the cranes he counts every winter morning.
유성까지 이십 분
A young founder rehearses his investor pitch aloud in a Daejeon taxi, and the driver interrupts with one simple question.
제물포에서 온 시계
In 1888, a young porter at the newly opened port of Jemulpo is paid ten times his usual fee to carry a mysterious ticking box to Hanyang on his back.
마지막 그네
In a near-future Seoul with almost no children, an ageing playground inspector finds a little girl on a swing he has been oiling for nobody.
짜장면 배달가
Told in the manner of a pansori singer: on a stormy night, Seoul's fastest delivery rider must get one bowl of black-bean noodles across the river in twenty minutes.
소나무 아래 개미
A retired forger who runs a framing shop in Insadong is asked to authenticate a painting, and recognises the tiny mark he once hid in it.
삼월에 내린 눈
Through letters passed on by an adoption agency, a woman raised in Minnesota and the mother who gave her up in Cheongju slowly find their way to each other.
백팔 배
A retired construction executive is sent on a temple stay in the Gangwon mountains by his daughter, and the monk who guides him is someone he once let go.
표준어로 읽어 주세요
A Seoul researcher goes to a mountain village in South Gyeongsang to record older speakers for a voice assistant, and her first speaker refuses to read the script.
전체 회신
A missing container of homemade kimchi sets off an ever-politer email war between two departments, and the list of people copied in keeps growing.
현상되지 않은 필름
A young man brings his late mother's camera to an old photo studio in Gunsan to develop the film left inside, and the owner recognises the camera.
당직 의사 한 명
At two in the morning, the only internist at a county hospital in the mountains of Gangwon-do gets a heart-attack patient she cannot treat there.
산복도로의 열대야
In the Busan of 2041, a young heatwave patrol officer climbs the hillside stairs every night to persuade a stubborn old sailor to sleep in a cooling shelter.
별이 떨어진 밤
On the night a Seoul restaurant guide is announced, a chef who has just lost his star gets an unexpected visit from his oldest rival.
돌반지
A woman remembers the winter of 1997, when her father's company went under and her mother took the family's gold to the bank.
목격자 진술서
A woman writes a careful statement to the police about a hit-and-run she saw on a rainy night in Ilsan, and adds one or two details too many.
끈 하나
A former sprinter who never made the national team becomes the guide runner for a blind athlete, and their first national final does not go to plan.
의자의 승진
An office fable: when a company's new attendance system ranks a salesman's empty chair as its best employee, the management takes the result very seriously.
홍어 한 접시
In a Mokpo fish market, a widowed stallholder notices that the retired Seoul banker who buys fermented skate from her every day never seems to eat it.
대행 하객
A woman who is paid to pose as a guest at strangers' weddings is booked as the bride's best university friend, and the bride keeps looking at her.
마지막 주심
After machines take over calling balls and strikes in professional baseball, a veteran umpire finds a new job in an amateur Sunday league where everyone argues with him.
삭다
A translator preparing an anthology for a London publisher gets stuck on the last word of a short poem by a fishmonger-poet from Suncheon.
서울말 공책
A woman from North Korea who works in a bakery in Nowon is asked to train a new employee from Daegu.
새벽 두 시의 빈소
On the last night of their father's three-day funeral in Daejeon, three siblings open his bankbooks to pay the bill and find something none of them expected.
외상 장부
On the last day of the only bookshop in a shrinking mining town in Taebaek, a middle-aged man comes in with an envelope and a confession.
제가 쓴 문장입니다
While everyone in his job-hunting study group lets an app write their cover letters, a final-year student insists on writing his own.
흔들지 않은 소리
A gayageum player injures the hand that gives the instrument its trembling voice, and her old teacher gives her a strange exercise.
같은 강
On their usual bench by the Han River, a retired taxi driver tells his old friend he will stop visiting his wife, who no longer recognises him.
칠번 국도의 끝
After his father is diagnosed with early dementia, a divorced son drives him up the east coast road the old truck driver knows by heart.
사과문_최종_진짜최종
When a chicken chain's giant wings turn out to be ordinary size, a PR assistant manager writes an apology that every level of the company then revises.
Nonfiction
4 original articles: explainers, news-style pieces, columns and workplace texts, each with a comprehension check.
숟가락 하나
Helping their mother pack up the family kitchen before a move, the narrator remembers a grandmother who laid one spoon too many at every meal.
Essay
강아지 유치원의 입학 원서
A newspaper columnist takes his mongrel to a dog kindergarten in Daechi-dong and finds a box on the form asking which university the owner went to.
Opinion column
등을 맡기는 곳
An essay on the closing of a neighbourhood bathhouse in Busan's Yeongdo, and on the one part of the body nobody can wash alone.
Essay
우산을 두고 내리는 사람들
A worker at a Seoul subway lost-property office reflects on the umbrellas nobody comes back for, and the one that somebody did.
Essay