Webstories / Novels / EBooks from Naver

I always thought I had already posted this. Oddly enough I haven’t, and it’s this secret page of web and self published stories by korean authors wannabes! I say secret, only because I always find it hard to navigate to this part of Naver in particular, and I must bookmark the link in order to return to it. and it’s this ! Maybe a year or so ago, when I first discovered this land of Korean readable materials, it had been a little too tough for me to read them so I would print a chapter and take a few months to digest them bit by bit. Then typical of my procrastinator style, I forgot ALL about it and one fine day after taking up 400 different interests and researching into plenty of unrelated things, guilt found its way back to into my conscience and I went back to those materials again, and was pleasantly surprised to find them not quite so tough any more (meaning a needy grip and pawing the dictionary every 2 seconds). I would like to attribute this to it being an indicator of my somehow bumming about passive receptive type lifestyle has improved my Korean language somehow and not that leaving lonely neglected korean books lying around for a year will magically dumb its own language down in a bid to get its owner to perhaps take another interest in it. If you know anything about the good quality offered by Naver in their webtoon department, you’ll be pleased to see a similar sort of layout in their web-novel section. Neatly categorized in a weekly calendar layout the releases available on respective days, readers will be able to get a good selection of the latest chapters published from their favourite stories, or if you prefer the traditional sorting by genre, that is available too. Naver keeps the completed novels (much like webtoons) available in archive, so you need not worry if you can’t catch up with the weekly updates from your favorite author. In case you scoff at the idea of ‘pfft, wannabe writers, they must have shit grammar and are not going to contribute to my learning foundation!’ this is where voting scores can help. Each chapter is open to vote as soon as its release, so high voting scores show a general consensus of ‘okay, this author is reliable, writes interesting stories’. Like the Korean drama style where episodes are shot in a chronological order (so the show’s producers can see reactions and alter stories, murder boring characters if need be), you can use the scores as some sort of indicator when you make your selection. However, you should be aware that some writers write colloquial, short form, and I’ve even read one that had dialogue all in Busan dialect!!

You’ll need a Naver account for these, obviously, but a google search will yield hundreds of fanclubs with tutorials on how to do so.  (I must admit I haven’t bothered to figure out just what Challenge League means just yet..)

The general list of genre categories are: – 로맨스 (romance) – SF&판타지 (SciFi & Fantasy) – 무혐 (Period dramas) – 미스터리 (Mystery)

If you’re a very determined Korean learner, you can scour the lands of the web to find all sorts of books with key search terms like 웹소설, 전자책, e북. I suppose these Naver web books may be too simple for you; in which case, do try the Naver Books section, or if you like the magazine style, then try the whole range of digitized ones offered by Seoul.go.kr

Story about a psychology expert turned teacher named Sumi, who helps a boy named Daehyeon who has the powers to ‘see’ the underwear of girls he touches, and is surprisingly frustrated by it, since it’s not something he can control. Lol

Or if you’re into mobile books, there are some free, like this one I’m reading, called 기억의 주인. The first part worth 400+ pages are all free!

• android
• ebook
• ebooks
• korean
• Korean language
• learning
• mobile
• novel
• reading
• resource
• self published
• stories
• text
• web