I "discovered" Korean in the late 90s, when my wife and I happened on Korean music videos on the International Channel. (Hello, people of Music Video Heaven.) We started renting Korean TV shows from a Korean video store in the Korean-centric suburbs north of Seattle, where we were oddities—albeit regular customers. My interest in Korean didn't progress much past teaching myself hangeul (the Korean writing system), so I could sound out lyrics in the booklets of the CDs we bought. Then, in 2012 (I think), a book proposal at my (then) job sparked my interest in K-pop and Korean all over again.
I started taking Korean lessons with a private tutor in September 2013. I am still very much a student of the language. My vocabulary's decent, my knowledge of grammar is adequate (and progressing), my pronunciation is all right, and my listening comprehension is poor. I took the 40th TOPIK test on April 25, 2015. I'd taken three practice tests, and my scores put me firmly in the "high beginner" category, but I'm sure I scored way lower on the actual, timed test, probably down in the "low beginner" range. (Update: I did.)
I've found that my background in linguistics has made some elements of language learning easier than they might otherwise be. It makes some strange features of Korean more readily comprehensible and some patterns more easily observed. But it can't make up for the fact that I am a student, and a beginner, at that.
It's likely that plenty of the things I write about Korean on this blog are incorrect in one way or another. I am no expert. If you find errors in any of my discussions of Korean (or anything else), please feel free to correct me.
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