- Comprehensive
- High quality dialogues
- Video role plays on every dialogue
- Lifetime access with a 60 day refund grace period
- Free mobile app access included
- Downloadable audio (app-only)
- Inbuilt gamification and leaderboard
- Slightly pricey
- Only one level available
- Slow forum replies
- Spammy affiliates
Rocket Korean is one of the better Korean courses, is comprehensive in its content, covering all skills, and uses high quality, natural dialogues.
NOTE: If you
When looking for a decent and reliable online course to learn Korean, there are a few that come to mind.
Back when I was living in South Korea doing my Korean language immersion, I relied heavily on TTMIK and YouTube to learn the foundations (as well as conversation on italki of course).
These were all tremendously useful but none could be described as a structured “course”.
It wasn’t until a while after I’d left Korea that I tried Rocket Korean finally.
I kind of wish I had known about it earlier.
The Korean edition of Rocket is unfortunately not as extensive as some of the other editions (e.g. Spanish and French) as it still only covers one level and does not include a second and third level (Russian got its extra levels a while back but Korean hasn’t yet).
So basically the core course is more suitable for Beginner Korean learners.
What Korean has picked up since I first reviewed it is the Play the Part add-on (30 extra role play lessons set in Korea) plus video role plays in every audio lesson, both of which I’ll cover below.
Rocket Korean uses what I nicknamed the ‘chunking approach’ (my own method) which means that the Korean language lessons are offered in bite-size pieces/chunks rather than explicit grammar rules.
If you’re looking for something dense and academic then you’re better off with a textbook.
This course is about practical language use and it’s surprisingly good at covering a lot of content in a succinct and easy way.
Here’s a quick video demo that I put together a while back of an earlier edition (massively improved in the most recent edition) exploring some other language editions:
Rocket Korean has some notable differences which I’ll cover below.
Rocket’s also available in the following languages: Spanish (Latin American), French, Japanese, German, Italian, Arabic (Egyptian), Chinese (Mandarin), Hindi, Russian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Sign Language (American), English and Inglés (English for Spanish speakers).
First of all: What are the other alternatives to Rocket Korean?
I’m sure you’ve landed here after doing your research to see what’s available.
Here are my absolute go-to resources for learning Korean (and what I would recommend to anyone asking me):
Each of them are vastly different resources in their content, style and methodology so I’ll try and sum it up for you:
Rocket Korean is a linear, structured audio course that guides you through a linear learning path.
90 Day Korean is a popular “inner circle” course for learning Korean with 4 x 90 day modules.
Glossika Korean is a spaced repetition learning system (amazingly useful listening comprehension builder).
KoreanClass101 is a podcast + video collection - very good but not structured in the way that Rocket Korean is.
And italki is hands down the most important site for connecting you with Korean conversation partners and teachers.
You’ve also got the household names like Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur and Assimil. They’re all very well-known but in my opinion suffer major flaws (see my reviews).
But for structured, linear course style learning (something that guides you from A to B to Z), Rocket Korean is the only decent resource available.
Rocket Korean’s problem with infuriating spam affiliates
I’m sure you’ve had to sift through a tonne of spam to arrive here.
One of the chief concerns with Rocket Korean is that its affiliates are out of control making it hard to find reliable, honest reviews on the usefulness of the product.
I avoided using it for years because of this, in fact.
The one thing you won’t find on this blog are glowing recommendations for products that I would never honestly recommend to anybody.
Know that sales abuses aren’t connected to or controlled by Rocket Languages.
They’re harming Rocket’s reputation, and it’s still a problem today. The spammy review sites have been joined by fake YouTube “reviews” from people who have clearly never used the product.
Honest disclosure: In the interests of full transparency, I occasionally use affiliate links on this site which means I do get a percentage on sales for products like Rocket Korean.
This helps me continue to provide high quality language content to my readers.
At first glance: Rocket Korean language course
One of the most common queries I get are comparisons between Rocket Korean and Rosetta Stone.
Which is odd because these products are totally different to each other.
I reviewed the Korean Rosetta Stone a while back and had some pretty sharp criticisms to share - while I think the program and learning style of RS is unique, it’s just too restrictive for one.
It requires you to learn Korean the way that they want you to.
Rocket Korean on the other hand gives you the freedom to learn the way you want to. It’s a structured course and is ideally used in a linear fashion but you can use it however you want to.
Want to skip lesson one and head straight for lesson 12? No problem.
It gives you the freedom to do that.
When you log in, the course is laid out in modules and each one mixes a few different lesson types:
1. Audio Lessons contain all of the high quality dialogue lessons delivered in a podcast-style format (four per module).
2. Language and Culture lessons look at the grammar and finer cultural points of Korean.
3. Writing Lessons show you how to read and write using the Korean alphabet (very easy!). There’s an introduction to Hangeul in the intro module and then two or three short alphabet lessons at the end of every module.
4. The Survival Kit contains core lessons on vital topics in Korean (in my opinion the most ideal place to begin).
5. And Tools (search, favorites, custom flashcards, the leaderboard, the forum and certification tests).
All up it’s 97 lessons across 7 modules (plus an intro module and the Survival Kit), with a Benchmark Test at the end to gauge where you’re at.
The course goes into detail on areas such as sport, family, Korean cultural topics (e.g. soju, karaoke, honorifics), business and more.
Whether or not you should start with writing used to be unclear, but it’s better now.
When I first reviewed the course the alphabet lessons were tucked away in their own section and the menu placement suggested you’d do them later. Now there’s an alphabet introduction right up front and the letter lessons are spread through the modules, so the intended order is obvious. I’d still advise front-loading the alphabet and getting it out of the way before moving on to the rest of the course.
The Korean alphabet is so easy to learn that really nobody has an excuse for not learning it quickly.
Rocket Korean teaches the Korean alphabet well… mostly
The Korean edition of Rocket is one of the six editions (along with Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Arabic and Hindi) with a strong focus on literacy skills.
This is because learning hangeul is so important.
If you live in Korea or intend to spend any amount of time there then you absolutely need to be able to read Korean letters (even if you don’t know much of the language). Menus and street signs are not always bilingual in Korea.
So I’m glad that Rocket Korean has invested a lot of time on this section.
The course teaches the alphabet in pairs - you can focus on 2 letters a day that way.
It works through the basic vowels first, then the double vowels (with a revision lesson), then the basic and double consonants (another revision lesson), and finishes with how the letters stack into two, three and four-letter syllable blocks and how Korean word spacing works. That last part is the bit most alphabet guides skip, so it’s good to see it covered.
For each pair of letters, the videos couldn’t be simpler either. The teacher slowly writes the letter for you to copy (each video’s just a few seconds long).
They then provide some information and examples of the letter being used in different words (plus audio recordings).
Perhaps too simplified for some but overall it covers hangeul nicely.
Rocket Korean - Tools - The Forum
Just to jump forward for a moment:
The Rocket Korean forum is still one of the more disappointing aspects of the program, though it’s not dead.
Members get a Korean learners forum as well as a general forum for everyone. When I first reviewed the course it was an almost completely dead user forum, with most of the recent posts being technical questions (why isn’t X working?).
It’s a bit better than that now. The forums are moderated by Rocket’s own tutors who do reply, but on a lag of months rather than days, so treat it as a reference library more than a live help desk. The main search tool in the app searches the forum posts too, so you’ll often find your question already answered without needing to post.
It would be far better, in my opinion, to have an AI expert built in to this, so that instead of waiting months for a reply, you get an instant answer - especially if it’s a simple grammar question.
If more conversation was encouraged - asking questions about Korean, competitions, etc. - it’d still be hugely beneficial to a lot of people.
One thing Rocket Korean gets right - honorific titles, levels of respect and banmal (반말)
This is one area in which Rosetta Stone failed miserably (I talked about it in my review).
Korean and Japanese are unique in the way they handle people of different ages and statuses addressing each other.
People basically speak using different vocab or altered word forms according to who they’re with. It’s quite complex and it’s one of the toughest aspects of Korean for a new learner to understand.
Most learners are at least aware of the use of the suffix 요 - when talking to an inferior or younger person, this suffix is taken off words.
E.g. when telling a young student to sit down, you’d say “앉아” but if you were telling an older colleague to sit down, you’d say “앉아요” (or even 앉으세요).
Rocket Korean covers all of this in excellent detail with lots of quality audio examples.
Audio lessons vs Language and Culture lessons in Rocket Korean (and the new video role plays)
I should point out that it’s the audio lessons alone that include the full set of listening options.
Every audio lesson follows the same shape: the main lesson podcast (an English-speaking host plus native Korean speakers), then the Role Playing section, the lesson vocab, an ‘expert tip’ from the host, and finally five practice activities: flashcards (spaced repetition style, where you rate how well you knew each card), listening (hear the phrase, then record it), writing (hear the phrase, then type it), speaking (record the phrase) and a short multiple-choice quiz.
The role plays are where the big change is since I first reviewed the course: they’re now on video.
The two speakers from the dialogue are filmed (vertical, phone-style clips) and you watch them deliver the conversation one line at a time. You can Watch the Full Conversation to see it play through, or Talk To one of the characters, which means you take one side of the dialogue and record yourself while the other speaker responds on video.
This isn’t a video course in the sense of a teacher standing in front of a camera giving you a 20 minute lesson. The podcast-style audio is still the core of every lesson. But it makes the dialogues feel a lot less like a listening drill and a lot more like an actual exchange with a person. There’s an Audio only mode toggle if you’d rather skip the video, and you can set how much text you see under it: the full Korean, every second word, or just the English.
In addition to all this, you can scroll down and listen to the individual sentences and additional vocabulary, or use the record feature to test your pronunciation. Rocket calls this Rocket Record: under the hood it uses your browser’s built-in speech recognition by default (the Google Web Speech API) with a second engine (Deepgram) as a fallback, and Korean is one of the languages the fallback supports.
The Language and Culture lessons don’t offer these podcasts and video conversations, but instead give you scenario sentences and dialogues to listen to and practice (with the same practice activities at the end).
Rocket Korean would definitely benefit from including conversations in these lessons as well.
Play the Part: the new Rocket Korean add-on (worth getting)
This is new since I first reviewed the course and it goes some way to making up for the missing Level 2 and 3.
Play the Part is a separate add-on of 30 lessons (3 modules of 10) built entirely around role play conversations set in Korea: getting lost in Seoul, kimchi day, temple touring, celebrating Seollal, a trip to Jeju and so on.
Each lesson gives you a short culture note, two role play conversations (with the video role plays I described above) and vocab lists. It’s light on grammar by design so it works best once you’ve got some of the language under your belt, which for Korean means finishing the core course first.
It’s priced at $149.95 on its own, but you’ll be able to get it at a much lower price when adding it on to the main course package.
Take my advice and get it. It’s the closest thing Korean has to an intermediate level right now.
I can’t recommend the Rocket Korean mobile app enough
In my opinion it’s even better than the web version.
And free to use for members.
The lesson material is identical (audio lessons, video role plays, practice activities, flashcards, favorites and the leaderboard are all in there) but the app just seems to run better for me on mobile and is a really distraction-free, sleek app to use.
There are only two real differences between the app and the website that you need to know about:
- Audio downloads are app-only. If you want the lessons offline for a commute or a flight, this is where you download them (see below).
- Certification tests are web-only. You’ll need to sit those on a computer.
It surprises me that it’s free and not a paid addon.
Rocket Record (the voice recognition) works flawlessly on the app too.
For anyone who commutes regularly, definitely download yourself the app.
Rocket Korean doesn’t prevent you from accessing what you’ve paid for (mostly)
Unlike some other services I know of.
You need to be aware of 2 things regarding Rocket Korean:
- It’s a non-recurring purchase (pay once, lifetime access).
- You can download the audio lessons for offline use, though only through the mobile app now.
It’s becoming increasingly common for online language learning services to run on a subscription basis (e.g. paying every month to access the site). Rocket Korean is a once-off, lifetime purchase.
They’ve stuck with this over the years and I still find it refreshing.
You pay once for Rocket Korean and own it for life.
The downloads side has been watered down a bit since I first reviewed the course though. Back then, every bit of audio was downloadable as MP3 files straight from the web dashboard, along with printable PDF lesson notes. The PDFs disappeared a while ago and now the MP3 downloads have gone from the web app too.
That’s unfortunate. Downloading MP3s from the website was one of the things that set Rocket apart from programs like Rosetta Stone and it felt like you actually owned the content you paid for.
The good news is that you can still download the audio lessons through the mobile app (Android and iOS) for offline listening, so commutes and flights are still covered. You just can’t pull the files onto your computer anymore. For the Language and Culture lessons, Print to PDF from your browser works fine if you want them saved locally.
With Rocket you still own what you pay for, you just have to use their app to take it with you.
Tools: Search, Favorites and the leaderboard
I already mentioned the forum above which is a disappointment but there are a few other tools that are done right in my opinion.
That is: Search and Favorites (what used to be called ‘My Vocab’), and the leaderboard.
One of my favorite features of Rocket Korean is in fact the Search tool which is basically a dictionary that looks up any word - English or Korean - in the course and displays its various contexts and usages (it searches the forum posts too).
You can then listen to the word or dialogue sentences demonstrating how to use that word.
It’s remarkably useful.
Favorites is the other half of it. Every phrase in every lesson has a little heart icon next to it and anything you heart goes into your Favorites list, where it gets its own set of flashcards, listening, writing and speaking drills. So you can build a personal practice deck out of whatever you’re struggling with, without leaving the lesson. There’s also a Custom Flashcards tool if you want to build your own sets from scratch (or use sets other members have made public).
The other tool is the leaderboard, along with daily points and study streaks. You get points for every lesson and activity you complete (and for posting in the forum), with a daily goal of 400 points that you can hide if it annoys you. Hitting your goal each day keeps your streak going (much like Duolingo), and the points move you up a leaderboard where you can compare yourself against other Korean learners or across all of Rocket’s languages, over the last day, week, month or year. This is a way to compete with other members.
Gamified competition like this is highly useful as a motivator.
There are also two kinds of proper tests now on top of the per-lesson activities. A Benchmark test sits at the end of the course to give you a rough gauge of where your ability is at, and certification tests live under the Tools menu (web only, not in the app), one for every module, which you unlock once you’ve finished that module. Rocket’s own claim is that completing all of a Level 1 course’s certification tests puts you at roughly CEFR A2. Take that with a grain of salt though: a test set and marked by the same course you’re studying is never the same as a real CEFR exam, but as a way of checking the material actually stuck it’s a useful addition.
Rocket Korean pricing and refund policy
Since Rocket Korean is a single level, the pricing is simple (one-time payment, lifetime access):
Rocket Korean - $149.95
Play the Part - $149.95 on its own (cheaper when bundled with the course)
There used to be a monthly subscription option as an alternative to buying outright but that’s gone. The only instalment option Rocket offers now is a 6-month payment plan, and that’s only on the three-level bundles for languages like Spanish, so it doesn’t apply to Korean.
The best deal by far is the family discount. If someone in your household already owns a course, Rocket will sell a second copy (with its own login and progress) at 60% off. You have to arrange it through their support team rather than at checkout.
At various times throughout the year, Rocket Korean runs special promotions or sales which are good to look out for.
NOTE: You can also sign up to
You can also try the course for free before buying and it doesn’t ask for a credit card.
As for refunds, Rocket Korean has a generous 60 day satisfaction guarantee meaning you have two months to request a refund if you’re unhappy. One caveat: that only applies if you buy through the website. If you buy inside the iOS app, you’re under Apple’s refund policy instead, which is roughly two weeks, so buy on the web.
Overall: Rocket Korean has surprising value despite a slow forum and only having one level
I don’t know Rocket’s plans for Rocket Korean and whether or not they’ll ever release the next two levels.
It’s a perfect resource for low-level Korean learners and, with the Play the Part add-on, will probably get you to a comfortable level of proficiency.
Beyond that however, intermediate to advanced-level learners are better off with a package like the Korean edition of Glossika.
The mobile app is excellent, the new video role plays are a big step up from what was there before, and you’re not forced to pay an ongoing subscription. The slow forum is something I can look past.
Get a free trial account of Rocket Korean by clicking here:
What are your thoughts on Rocket Korean? Share below.
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3 COMMENTS
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Sally Work
Hi Donovan. I just came across this post today. I don’t know when you posted it because there’s no date indicated. Are you still offering the discount just for your readers? If so, I am very interested in checking out Rocket Korean. Thanks!
Arlene Muno
I just wanted to thank you, Donovan, for your review on Rocket Korean. Your review held my attention more than any other reviews online. My family and I (myself, husband and 2 boys, 8 & 9 y/o) will be relocating from Southern California to Seoul South Korean in just over a month from now. We are excited and thrilled to enter into a new Culture and learn a new language. Thanks to your review, I will be owning Rocket Korean soon!
*Cheers!
Donovan Nagel
No worries, Arlene.
All the best in South Korea! It’s an amazing place to live. I miss it.