Travel Talk Korean by Penton Overseas
I recognized some of the Korean here from other Korean language audiobooks. Alas, this one was lacking. There is little time to repeat the phrases. The organization is lacking. Many sections are just "common phrases" again. The voice and tone are both somewhat muted. There are much better 1 hour introductions to Korean out there.
Pimsleur Korean Level 1 Lessons 11-15 by Pimsleur
In the third installment, there is a lot of time spent ordering bottles of wine or cans of beer. These lessons are not particularly useful and are difficult to stick. The numbers are covered in various times, but just don't seem to stick either. Korean does have a couple numbering systems, making it even more confusing. This is a time where drilling or using audio and video together would be more useful.
Pimsleur Korean Level 1 Lessons 6-10 by Pimsleur
I was getting lost going through these ones. There was a lot of ordering beverages and greetings. It seems more bits would fade than stick. I'll try going through again.
Korean Hangul for Beginners by Soohee Kim, Haewon Cho and Emily Curtis
Hangul is a logical writing system that combines an intuitive alphabet in a syllabic writing system. The letters are written in a way that relates to the way they are pronounced. They are then combined in blocks with consonants and vowels that make up a syllable. The sounds are almost always the same, though there are some special cases especially at the ends of the words. This workbook provides a good way of learning. It explains the symbols and provides details on how symbols are built upon previous symbols. There is plenty of practice with both writing and hearing the characters. It does require some effort to learn the characters, but just reading the book can provide some background.
