한국어 · Beginner 1(a)
Learn to type in Korean
Home row anchors
Settle both hands on the home row: A S D F for the left, J K L ; for the right.
Physical key labels appear above. 한국어 layout labels appear below — and between them these three rows produce every character the practice words here use.
Learning to type in Korean
Korean is written in the Hangul script. The 2-Set Hangul layout maps 31 characters across the keys you already have, so every motion transfers and every letter moves.
A glance at the keyboard costs more in Korean than in a language you already type, because it rehearses exactly the habit you are trying to replace: reading the keys instead of remembering them. Covering the keyboard for the first week is unpleasant advice that works.
Korean uses the Hangul alphabet, so a 2-Set Hangul keyboard puts a different letter under every finger you already know. 31 keys are remapped, and that is the entire difficulty: the motions are the ones you have, aimed at different letters.
Progress is measured in clean passes, not time spent. Nine stages, a few drills each, three accurate repetitions per drill by default — and the counter does not move for an attempt with errors in it. The speed test and the games draw on one bank of 42 common Korean words — 62 distinct characters in all, averaging 1.8 written units per word.
Not all keys are worth the same. Ten characters carry around 32% of everything you will type in these Korean drills, and the remaining 52 share what is left. That is why the course introduces its material a little at a time rather than all at once: the early characters do a disproportionate amount of the work.
- Writing system
- Hangul
- Keyboard layout
- 2-Set Hangul IME
- Direction
- left to right
- Mapped characters
- 31
- Practice words
- 42
- Distinct characters
- 62
- Average word
- 1.8 units
Characters that come up most in these Korean words
- 다5
- 시4
- 나3
- 것2
- 늘2
- 움2
- 좋2
- 천2
- 간1
- 공1
- 교1
- 구1
Counted across the 42 practice words — the ones worth recognising first.
편안한 손으로 홈 열의 자리를 찾습니다Dubeolsik, and why Hangul suits a keyboard so well
Hangul was designed in the fifteenth century as a featural alphabet — letters whose shapes reflect how they are pronounced — and it turns out to suit a keyboard unusually well. Letters are typed in sequence and the software assembles them into syllable blocks as you go, so you type three keys and watch one character form.
Dubeolsik, the two-set layout these lessons use, is the overwhelming standard: consonants on the left hand, vowels on the right, which produces natural hand alternation because Korean syllables alternate consonant and vowel. It is on every Korean keyboard sold and every phone.
Sebeolsik, the three-set layout, separates initial consonants, vowels and final consonants into three groups. It is more efficient by keystroke count and is used by a small number of committed typists, in much the same relationship to Dubeolsik that Dvorak has to QWERTY.
Questions about typing in Korean
Do I need a Korean keyboard?
No hardware is needed. 2-Set Hangul IME is an operating-system layout, available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS without installing anything. The one thing worth setting up is a quick way to switch between it and your usual layout, because you will be doing that constantly.
Which Korean keyboard layout do these lessons use?
2-Set Hangul IME, with 31 characters mapped across the standard key positions. The 42 practice words between them reach every one of those 31 characters rather than a comfortable corner of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the physical key and the character it produces together, so you are never reading a layout diagram in one window while typing in another.
What will I actually be typing in Korean?
Sequences of the keys each stage has introduced — single letters first, then pairs, then short chunks — in Hangul as the 2-Set Hangul layout produces it, rather than transliterated into Latin letters. The point of the course is the position of a key rather than the vocabulary. The 42 common Korean words in the practice bank are what the speed test samples and what the games pull from, once the positions stop needing thought.
How long does learning to touch type in Korean take?
Longer than a week and shorter than you fear — and it depends far more on how often you practise than on how long each session runs. Short daily sessions beat long weekly ones by a wide margin, because what you are building is recall and recall decays between sessions. The streak counter exists for that reason.
Can I skip ahead to a later stage?
Yes, nothing is locked. It is usually a mistake, though, because each stage assumes the keys before it have stopped needing thought — and a stage practised on top of a shaky one tends to embed the shakiness rather than fix it.
Why does a drill need three clean passes?
Because one correct attempt proves you can do it and three prove you can repeat it, which is the thing that eventually becomes automatic. Attempts with mistakes in them do not count towards the three — not as a punishment, but because practising an error is how an error becomes a habit. Three is the default rather than a rule: Settings will take it down to one or up to ten.
Is Korean hard to type?
Harder to start, not harder to reach. Every motion you already have transfers; what does not is the map, and 31 key positions have to be relearned. With a wide character inventory — 62 distinct characters appear in the practice bank alone, most people are past the worst of it inside two weeks of short daily sessions.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
No account, no payment, no trial. Progress is stored in this browser, which is enough until you want it on a second device or on a leaderboard — that is the only thing an account buys, and it is optional.
Also in Korean: the speed test and typing games.
Other languages that move the alphabet onto the same keys: Tigrinya, Amharic, Armenian, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- Typing Korean: Dubeolsik and the syllable blockKorean letters are typed in order and assembled into blocks as you go: which keys build a syllable, and why Dubeolsik alternates hands by construction.
- Adding a keyboard layoutThe step before any of this works: turning on the layout in your operating system, switching to it, and what to do about the wrong letters on your keycaps.
- What touch typing isTouch typing means typing without looking, using all ten fingers from a fixed home position. What it is, why it works, and what it is not.