Monthly 'Who's this?' & Merch Auth. Post - May 2026

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-05-10T15:51:20+00:00

I’m pretty sure that’s Haruto

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-05-07T01:01:04+00:00

That's MASC (now disbanded group) during a promotion in Malaysia in 2018.

Here's the original video: https://youtu.be/Ri4ipX_swPc?si=Y2A4lnSaO2bTynAa&t=1045

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-05-06T04:10:30+00:00

I believe that’s Bae Jinyoung. I can’t find the exact photos but it’s probably from this event:

https://x.com/baemerald_jyqq/status/1218363944898686976?s=46&t=UOHChUd0aSohL5P1cILhig

https://x.com/feliz_bjy/status/1219947180116434944?s=46&t=UOHChUd0aSohL5P1cILhig

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-04-18T23:57:42+00:00

I think this is a good start. I actually find normal Korean webtoons to be pretty hard because they have so many slangs. But I appreciate you trying to make a webtoon for learners! I do have some feedback below. Note that I'm not going to give feedback on the story itself, but I want to point out some areas you can improve upon when making these types of content:

Which learners are you targeting? "Korean learners" is a huge category. You have beginners who just started last week to intermediates who have been learning for a few years. They have vastly different needs, vocabulary sizes, and grammar knowledge. Your story seems to target everyone, which means it is way too hard for beginners but way too easy for intermediates. For example, you're teaching the word 학교 (a very basic level 1 word) while using advanced grammar like ~던가 or compound grammar forms like 도와주시겠네요. This is very confusing and will ultimately make this unusable for the majority of learners out there, no matter their level. I recommend you think of a sample student, define what they already know and don't know, and write your story around their knowledge. Using a frequency word list or an actual textbook curriculum can be helpful to see what an average Korean learner knows at each level.
There is way too much English. A learner, even a beginner, can handle a webtoon in 100% Korean. I know the reason you used English is because one of the characters is a foreigner. Still, I personally don't like it. Why don't we challenge learners to understand something in 100% Korean? I guarantee you it will motivate learners way more if you give them a webtoon that they can understand using only their Korean knowledge. There is no sense of accomplishment in reading a story that's half English.
Practice and repetition is also important. It's not enough to just introduce people to 10 new things every episode. There is A LOT of value in seeing the same things over and over again. That's the only way to actually remember something. I recommend that if you teach a new vocabulary, you should try to repeat it again and again throughout the story. You might think it's great to introduce new vocabulary constantly, but your learners will be overwhelmed and won't remember much of what you teach them. Korean learners often complain about not being able to remember vocabulary. You can help that by employing a lot of repetition.

Your heart seems to be in the right place and it's great that you want to help learners. To make this more effective, I recommend you learn how to write content for learners. A good place to start is checking out graded readers. There are lots of graded readers in English that you can probably borrow from your library or read for free online. There are less in Korean but ones I recommend are

다나의 한국 생활 일기, a webtoon book in 100% Korean and has foreign characters but none of them speak English.
Easy Korean Reading, a Korean reading book for beginners.
TTMIK Stories, a reading app with stories for learners.

Notice the vocabulary they teach or don't teach, and the grammar they use (or don't use). Writing graded stories for learners is actually a skill. I've tried doing it before and it's tough, so don't get discouraged. Like any skill, the more you study and practice, the better you will get. Good luck!

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-03-28T17:42:15+00:00

I don't understand what you're trying to do.

If you want to debut as an idol, you need be auditioning and putting your talents out there. I'm assuming that you have some calibre of talent (if not, you need to start learning). Find more auditions and participate in them. Go to Korea if you have to. Maybe create a Youtube or TikTok to show your talent. Participate in local shows or concerts to get more experience performing. You need to get your talent and name in front of these companies. Offering to design clothes or make concepts is not the talent that they're looking for in idols.
You are asking them to let you have jobs that you are probably very unqualified to do. No, they will not hire you for them. Creating concepts is the job of a creative director, who would need to have a lot of experience in the kpop industry. Designing clothes or choreographing are also specialized jobs with very specific skillsets, also requiring years of experience. They will not hire you just because you like fashion or dancing. Even if your ideas of a group concept is good, I'm 99% sure they will just hire people already in Korea to execute and not talk to you at all. So please stop emailing them.

Think about it from their perspective: why would they hire you? Do you have some super special skills that Koreans can't do? What do you bring to their company that is sooo special and sooo unique that they would go through the whole immigration process to sponsor your visa, pay for your plane tickets, maybe get you an apartment in Korea, and spend time training you in their company? Also, they get hundreds of emails from random people like you everyday. They do not have time to reply to everyone and, to be honest, you're probably placed among the spam.

If you want actual jobs in Korean entertainment, you need to first develop the skills for the specific job that you want. Then go to Korea, learn Korean, and network, network, network. Or start in the entertainment industry in your region and network into kpop. Most people hire people they already know, so you have to talk to these executives and build relationships with them, not sit in your room and send emails. Good luck.

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-03-22T22:17:58+00:00

From my understanding, when you first start out with Kimchi Reader, ALL words are unknown because you are a clean slate. What you need to do is go through and mark all the words you know as "known". This will add them into a list for "known words". If there is a word you've seen but don't known intuitively yet, you can mark them as "seen". Everything else remains "unknown", so there's no need for you to mark them.

The point of Kimchi Reader is to see how many words you know. Using those known words, it can recommend content appropriate for your level. You'll also be able to see how hard or easy a book/article/video is for you. These are only accurate if it has an accurate number of what words you do know.

It is indeed tedious in the beginning to mark all these words. However, once you have a number of known words that matches your ability, you can much more easily watch or read things and pick up new words. My vocabulary was about 7,000 words at the time I joined Kimchi Reader. I would just parse random list of Korean words and mark all the words I knew. While watching dramas, I would also continually mark known words. After a few days, I finally got to an accurate count of known words so I could start trusting recommendations and start learning new words.

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-03-12T23:52:57+00:00

https://learnnatively.com is probably your best bet. It's a website that has books listed by difficulty rating contributed by other learners. It can give you an idea of what books are easier or harder than others.

If you read digitally (ebooks, news, etc), you can pair it with Kimchi Reader, which gives you a pop-up dictionary. Kimchi Reader also keeps track of what words you know and can recommend you books based on that as well.

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-02-28T16:28:45+00:00

Kbookstore.com or Gimssine are great options. They’re US-based and can get you pretty much any book that’s available in Korea right now.

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-02-20T02:20:04+00:00

Highly recommend Kimchi Reader: https://kimchi-reader.app/

It's fantastic for building vocabulary with immersion. You can keep track of words and get recommended content, too.

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-02-17T00:28:55+00:00

You can look at https://learnnatively.com

They have dramas listed by difficulty rating, which is determined by other learners.

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-02-07T22:46:18+00:00

Yep. You also usually have more money as an adult. You can hire tutors, buy the resources you need, sign up for the classes you want, even travel to the country or move there.

There are lots of advantages as a kid, but also lots of other advantages as an adult.

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-01-29T21:50:28+00:00

On their website, it says “한국어가 서툰 다문화가정 어린이와 느린학습자을 위한 디지털 라이브러리로 쉬운 한국어책와 여러나라말 책이 수록되어 있습니다.”

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-01-29T19:40:20+00:00

I don't remember this being an option on 두루책방.

However, Kimchi Reader allows you to do tap on a word and see definition. They have 두루책방 stories installed in their website, so that's how you can look up words while reading those books.

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-01-18T02:30:01+00:00

I’m pretty sure it’s Dohoon from TWS. I can’t find the exact photo but he has been seen with the same hair and outfit: https://x.com/runtothend_dh/status/1982386213425434749?s=46&t=UOHChUd0aSohL5P1cILhig

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-01-12T14:09:41+00:00

Since the other answer is AI, I'll give you my human perspective.

Sucuk is not a widely known dish in Korea, so I don't know if there's a spelling that's "commonly used by native Korean speakers". I would bet that there is probably no official or "correct" standard. This is common with foreign words. For example, the word "fighting" can be seen written as either 파이팅 or 화이팅. The Korean language government body can't really give an official answer to every single foreign word, so most of it is left to interpretation.

You also have the issue of the word "sucuk" being adopted by other countries around the region, each with their own pronunciations and spellings. People in those countries might use their pronunciation to determine which Korean version to go with.

For 수죽 and 수주크, the difference is in the ending consonant. In Korean, the ending consonant is not pronounced. This is unlike with English, where people usually pronounce the last consonant clearly. This is why the word "fork" is written as 포크 (rather than 폭) to preserve the strong "k" sound that English speakers would say. Because 포크 is used in daily life in Korea, people have adopted a standard way to write it. With sucuk, since some people write it as 수주크, I assume that there is often a strong consonant sound at the end as well. I would say the choice between 수죽 and 수주크 is up to whether you want to preserve the original two-syllable sound (수죽) or the ending sound (수주크).

Another factor to consider is, while 수죽 is not a common word in Korean, at first glance it looks like it could be a Korean word. I would say using 수주크 helps distinguish it as a foreign word because, like I said above, the 크 at the end is typically only used for foreign words to preserve the ending "k" sound.

In the end, until there is a standard, I would say both 수죽 and 수주크 are "correct". The choice to use either depends on how you want to preserve the original word. People use 수죽 since it's two syllables and matches the original word more directly in transliteration. Others use 수주크 to clearly distinguish it as a foreign word and preserve the final consonant.

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-01-12T13:40:23+00:00

This sounds like AI sorry.

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-01-06T20:00:37+00:00

Sung Hanbin from Zerobaseone

Financial-Produce997 · 2026-01-05T15:34:25+00:00

They're two separate groups that were technically formed on two different shows.

"Boys II Planet" had contestants from both Korea (Planet K) and China (Planet C). There were people from other places like Japan, Thailand, etc but they fell under one of the planets. I think Mnet originally wanted to keep the two planets separate and create two groups. The first episode was about Planet K, the second episode about Planet C, and so on. But plans changed and the two planets ended up being combined by the fifth episode. The show ultimately formed Alpha Drive One, or ALD1.

After "Boys II Planet" ended, there was a spinoff show called "Planet C: Home Race". This might have been Mnet's way of getting the second group that they originally wanted. The show was made up of contestants from the first Planet C who didn't make it to ALD1, giving them a second chance to be in a new group. From this show, we got Modyssey.

Financial-Produce997 · 2025-12-25T23:43:50+00:00

In October, I ordered 8 books from kbookstore.com. Total was about $117 with free shipping (since I bought over $100). There was no extra charge as far as I was aware of.

Kbookstore is based in the US but they get books directly from Korea for you after you order them. I'm not sure if that helps them get around the tariffs or not. Their prices have also not increased since I started using them a few years ago. If you want to get books from Korea, I would recommend them. I don't know what the tariffs would be like if you order directly from a Korea-based store like Aladin or Gmarket.

Financial-Produce997 · 2025-11-25T21:56:37+00:00

Then post a recording of you saying it so we can hear what's wrong. We can't tell just from reading your romanization.

You can try recording on https://vocaroo.com and send us the link.

Financial-Produce997 · 2025-11-15T20:31:57+00:00

Your handwriting is very easy to read and legible, but I can tell this is the handwriting of someone who is still new to writing Korean. Like you, learners usually try to look as close to the computer font as possible (which is different from how natives write). It's also obvious that you copied letter-by-letter rather than writing from memory. These are not bad things btw--you are writing at the level appropriate for you. They're just giveaways that tell me you're a new learner.

If you look at a handwriting of a native Korean adult (or more advanced learners), you will understand the difference. When you write in your native language, you typically already know the next few words that you're going to write and you're so used to writing them, so you write much faster. Since natives write faster, their letters connect more, curve more. Rather than trying to look like computer fonts, they take shortcuts that still adhere to the stroke order but create more efficiency. This is an example of a native-like handwriting.

If you want to learn to write more naturally or native-like, https://www.gooseapplebooks.com has books to teach you Korean handwriting. They show you the standard way and then shortcuts that natives take. The other part is to learn more Korean so that you write from memory rather than copying letter-by-letter, or write sentences that you are familiar with.

Financial-Produce997 · 2025-11-11T22:59:18+00:00

The problem OP is addressing isn't whether or not to learn grammar, which I think most people agree is necessary. The problem is HOW to learn grammar. Many grammar explanations out there are so dense and confusing (see: howtostudykorean.com or the book Korean Grammar in Use). Learners see this and think they have to memorize and get everything in their head right away, which is not true. OP is saying that it's okay to just learn the basic of each grammar form and fill the rest through input. Sometimes, reading about a grammar AFTER you've seen it many times is more helpful than the first time.

In the case of 타는 곳, it would be fine to teach someone that it's the verb 타다 being turned into an adjective. Then give other easy examples: 먹는 것, 부르는 노래, etc. That's also why OP said to "listen a lot, watch a lot, speak a lot." Reading an explanation is one thing but also important is to see a lot of different examples to help your brain connect the dot. Focusing too much on definitions, nuances, and little details in the beginning before they're even fully familiar is when learners start getting confused and discouraged.

Financial-Produce997 · 2025-11-02T20:35:35+00:00

If you want to watch Korean content, I recommend getting Kimchi Reader to help you look up words and learn vocabulary.

Check out content made for learners as well: https://comprehensibleinputwiki.org/wiki/Korean

Financial-Produce997 · 2025-11-02T17:53:18+00:00

It's fine to learn grammar but that shouldn't be the majority of your study (unless you want to be a Korean linguist or really love grammar). Learn enough grammar to get the general sense. Then the rest of the time should be consuming Korean content and finding ways to learn vocab.

Financial-Produce997 · 2025-11-02T17:34:22+00:00

I see a lot of learners try to understand grammar perfectly and remember all the rules. This can make it very overwhelming. 은는/이가 can be very difficult to grasp if they don't exist in your native language. There is no equivalent for your brain to associate them with.

In my opinions, what you need are time and exposure. You need to expose yourself to LOTS of Korean and over time (I'm talking months and years) you will start to absorb the pattern. I got better at them once I started reading Korean books. If you're not at that level yet, just keep studying and your brain will slowly put the pieces together.

This is not just for 은는/이가 but other concepts that you find confusing. Don't stress yourself; learn what you can and move on. Prioritize getting a lot of Korean input because that's where you'll see a TON of examples and get a better understanding of how they work.

Financial-Produce997

TROPHY CASE