Korean stories: Home & daily
15 Jireader stories are on this theme: 4 at TOPIK 1, 2 at TOPIK 2, 5 at TOPIK 3, 3 at TOPIK 4, 1 at TOPIK 5. Every one has audio narration, a tap-to-learn glossary and a comprehension quiz.
Level 1 · TOPIK 1 (4)
- 숙제는 나중에 Homework Can Wait
A friend from her hometown is coming for the first time in years, so Jimin scrubs her room spotless and hides the homework she never finished. But is a clean room really what her old friend came to see?
15 sentences · ~6 min · teaches 8 new words
- 엄마, 쉬세요 Rest, Mom
It is already noon and Mom is still asleep after working all week. Junsu can't cook or clean the way she does, but he is set on doing the one small thing he can.
14 sentences · ~6 min · teaches 8 new words
- 열쇠 없는 밤 Locked Out
Past midnight, Jiho drags himself up to his boarding-house room wanting only his bed. Then he reaches into his pocket and finds the key is gone.
15 sentences · ~6 min · teaches 8 new words
- 할머니의 따뜻한 손 Warmer Than the Floor
On a freezing winter afternoon, a child dashes to Grandmother's house, shivering, and refuses to take off the coat. Grandmother knows exactly what warms a person up.
14 sentences · ~5 min · teaches 1 new words
Level 2 · TOPIK 2 (2)
- 지우지 못한 자국 The One Mark She Kept
Suji means to scrub her new lakeside apartment clean of everyone who lived there before her - until, low on one wall, a child's faded height marks stop her rag mid-wipe.
19 sentences · ~8 min · teaches 12 new words
- 할머니의 열린 문 Grandmother's Open Door
A granddaughter spends one long spring day cleaning out her grandmother's empty hanok, ready to let it go — until the returning light and an old neighbor's visit make her ask what the house is really for.
19 sentences · ~8 min · teaches 12 new words
Level 3 · TOPIK 3 (5)
- 상자를 들이던 밤 The Boxes by the Door
A week into the first place he can call his own, Minsu still hasn't unpacked; the boxes wait by the door, ready to leave. Then a storm cuts the power, and the woman next door knocks with a thermos of tea.
27 sentences · ~10 min · teaches 16 new words
- 그림이 된 하루 The Day That Became a Painting
On a rain-soaked moving day, the quiet gentleman from upstairs helps a frazzled newcomer with her boxes, then says almost nothing about himself. Weeks later, a small neighborhood exhibition shows her just how closely he had been watching.
26 sentences · ~10 min · teaches 16 new words
- 열어 둔 문 The Door He Left Open
On the coldest night of the year, the heat dies across an aging apartment block. Everyone calls the lone night guard merely "diligent" — but no one has ever asked why he keeps one storeroom door open all winter.
27 sentences · ~9 min · teaches 16 new words
- 빈 의자 하나 The Empty Chair
Jisu never wanted housemates — she took the cheap room only because her rent had run out. A midnight scream, a pot of spicy stew, and one always-empty chair slowly blur the line between the house's rules and its warmth.
26 sentences · ~10 min · teaches 16 new words
- 삼 년의 거리 The Distance Between Us
It's moving day when the brother who went overseas three years ago walks back in — almost a stranger. Between the boxes, a cut hand, and a run to the ER, a younger sibling searches for the brother he remembers.
25 sentences · ~9 min · teaches 16 new words
Level 4 · TOPIK 4 (3)
- 꺼지지 않는 창 The Window That Never Goes Out
Every night a broke student feels her way home down a pitch-dark alley, steering by the one window across the low wall that never goes out. The night she's locked out in the cold, she learns why it burns.
40 sentences · ~12 min · teaches 20 new words
- 낯선 도시의 시금치 Spinach in a Strange City
New to the capital and furnishing her first room from strangers' reviews, Yuna argues a bad delivery down to a refund — then a neighbor's kitchen fire brings a shaken old woman to her door, with a spinach recipe and a kindness no rating can measure.
40 sentences · ~11 min · teaches 20 new words
- 처마 밑의 둥지 The Nest Under the Eaves
To Jiho, his retiring professor is a relic — a scholar of worthless old houses whose sharp questions block the grades he needs. Then, without a word of reproach, the old man leads him through a neighborhood marked for demolition.
37 sentences · ~10 min · teaches 20 new words
Level 5 · TOPIK 5 (1)
- 남의 집을 지키던 사람 The Keeper of Other People's Houses
A young woman who has only ever slept in rooms rented under other people's names takes a housekeeping job at an old man's tile-roofed house — and between his fading stories and one storm-lit night, she stumbles onto what it means to belong somewhere.
51 sentences · ~13 min · teaches 24 new words