I enjoyed Korean 1, I think it moved at an okay pace. I would’ve enjoyed if some more cultural aspects were included. The assignments were pretty good from what I remember, although the oral was a bit stressful. The exam was a bit tricky but I studied a lot so did okay. I think if you study it is entirely possible to do well.

Just did Korean 1 and Korean 2 this year, and there are some changes in terms of how it has been organised (but the Koreaboo aspect is definitely still there, like almost 99% of my class were Kpop addicts, wanted Korean boyfriends and such, coming from someone who simply wanted to learn Korean because my friend learning Chinese and is Korean and I was like, as a Chinese person, why not? Ahah). I think Korean 1 has improved since the previous years as the tasks were clear and you were given a practice exam for revision for the final exam. The lecturer was also really dedicated to helping students with the content in Korean 1, responded to emails promptly and overall the lectures were fun to attend. The content itself for both Korean 1 and 2 were not too difficult (given that I had self learned some Korean before, but for people completely inexperienced, it won’t be too difficult to catch up). There is no subject review for Korean 2, but I have to say that the organisation in Korean 2 was disappointing; the written tasks were very unclear (and sometimes contradictory, like we were given a task to describe our plans and activities, but then the example given to us with a narrative and story of someone’s holiday?), the coordinator/lecturer (we had our subject coordinator as our lecturer this time) took forever to respond to emails, the lecture content was definitely not as engaging as Korean 1 and was very dry, for our final lecture, she literally told us HALF AN HOUR prior to the lecture time that it will be on zoom and NOT RECORDED and at the end of the semester, she then mentioned that lecture attendance was compulsory (which wasn’t mentioned at all throughout the semester) and I literally have a screenshot that it says only tutorials in the start of the semester, only for it to change to “class attendance” at the end of the semester (I ended up freaking out as I had clashing lectures during that time, but she then replied to my email saying that just watching the recordings is fine, which is contradictory to what she said). In preparation for our exam in Korean 2, we were given ZERO practice exams and we did our exam in a completely foreign platform (doing the exam on Gradescope). Overall, as of now, I can recommend doing Korean 1 (it will be hard work, but not difficult to get H1 overall as the subject itself is pretty organised), but definitely not Korean 2.

3 final exams in the exam period. You won't be able to study for other subjects.

You are going to have 12 assignments a semester. Which you might imagine each weight is light but each assignment is time-consuming. Besides, 99% of your classmates are gonna be Koreaboo Asian. If you are not a koreaboo then you must be careful taking this subject.