EK Newsletter | Winter 2022

안녕하세요 여러분 Hello everyone!

Welcome to the Winter Edition of the Essential Korean Seasonal Newsletter.

There’s no better time to renew your commitment to learning Korean than at the start of a new year. Entering 2023, we’d like to suggest a few ways to support your Korean journey, along with some important announcements.

Over the next month, we’ll also be sending out an email each week covering a Korean concept as well as exploring a feature available to everyone on Essential Korean. We promise the emails will be thoughtful but short and sweet.

Now let us talk about what's been going on at Essential Korean!

What We’ve Been Working On

The Essential Korean App, available to EK Members
 

As promised, we’ve released our beta edition of the Essential Korean app for EK Members! If you’d like to have early access to it, please email us at contact@essentialkorean.com. It currently has all our courses (including the podcast course), exercises, transcripts, worksheets, and events on one interface. It is one of the biggest steps we’ve made to make our Essential Korean content easier to access on the go.
 

Stay tuned for news on our official release for all members. We’re really excited to share this project with you!

Calendar Page and EK Events

We’ve added a calendar page on our website where all EK classes led by Teacher Kay and Conversation Tables for practicing and studying with other members are listed– it’s a great way to bring social accountability into your Korean study routine. Make sure to check out the page often, as we update it with other exciting events as well.

YouTube and Instagram Launch

We’ve finally released our YouTube and Instagram pages!

We’ve begun uploading on the EK Podcast channel, where you can find our podcast episodes available on YouTube. We will also have lessons with Teacher Kay on our @ektk channel, which will be releasing special content for channel members over the coming weeks. 

We’re continuing to post on our Instagram daily with truly bite-sized videos featuring short and fun language and culture lessons by Teacher Kay. Check them out on our Instagram at @essential.korean.

Revamped EK Courses

We’ve updated the EK Courses to better reflect the progress you make, as well as made it easier to track your growth with an updated numbering system. Try it out on our courses page– you’ll continue to see aesthetic and performance changes to our courses to make them more delightful to learn from than ever.

Find our courses here to see what’s changed. 

What To Look Forward To

Study Buddy System Rework

We’re reworking our study buddy system from the ground up to be more intuitive and conducive to finding others to study Korean with. If you’re a college student, be on the lookout for announcements as we form study groups for college students!

Bonus Section: New Year’s Celebrations

korea on new year’s Day [설날]

새해 복 많이 받으세요

On new year’s day and during the first few days of the new year, Koreans exchange the phrase, “새해 복 많이 받으세요.” The literal translation of 새해 복 많이 받으세요 is Please receive a lot of fortune in the new year, offering good wishes to each other to start the new year on a warm and hopeful note.

Children bow to older members of the family while saying "새해 복 많이 받으세요" and receive 세뱃돈, which literally means bow money. The children start the new year not only with renewed plans for their school and academic work but also for some purchases they can make with the money earned :)  
 

Here’s a video showing the proper ways for new year’s day bows, 세배:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0vkgV1DLMw

We'd like to thank you all for your support and

love for learning that keeps us going.

새해 복 많이 받으세요! Happy New Year!