NAJEON: Learn to Read Korean

A puzzle for learning to read Korean.

**It is about the letters, not conversation**
People say you can learn Hangul in a day. You can learn to decode it in a day. Reading it without thinking, writing it, hearing the difference between 받침 — that takes longer. This app spends its time there.

**Match → hear → build → trace**
Line up three of the same tile and they clear. The first time you meet a letter, it is read aloud, you assemble it from its parts, and you trace the stroke order with your finger. After that it flows — no buttons to press, no cards to grade.

**It starts where Korean children start**
자모 (the letters) → 반절 (the syllable table) → 받침 (final consonants) → 어휘 A, B, C (vocabulary). 433 stages in all, from your first look at Hangul through to intermediate TOPIK words.

**Letters alone don't stick, so they come as words**
가 and 나 on their own mean nothing. Here they arrive inside 가방 (bag) and 나무 (tree) — the words that letter actually lives in. Every word carries its romanisation, its meaning, and, where it has one, the Chinese character behind it.

**받침 collapse into seven sounds**
ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅇ. Twenty-seven written finals, seven sounds. When 한국말 comes out as [한궁말], you hear it happen rather than reading a rule about it.

**Korea opens as you go**
Each stage you finish opens one photograph: a scenic site, a craft, a dish. Bulguksa in Gyeongju. Mother-of-pearl lacquer from Tongyeong. Bibimbap in Jeonju. 118 places, 56 crafts, 92 dishes, across all seventeen provinces.

**Why "najeon"**
나전칠기 is the craft of cutting shell into threads and setting them into black lacquer. Small fragments, laid one at a time, become a single picture. That is what learning letters is, so that is the name.

**What's free**
자모 and 반절 — 36 stages — are free. The remaining 397 unlock once, for a single payment. Not monthly. No advertising. Nothing is collected about you.

Inside: the full syllable table / 27 finals / 3,033 words / 1,799 Sino-Korean characters / 433 stages
Interface: English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Russian, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian