The words profiled in this book are all commonly used in the Korean language and are both informative and fun for English-speaking children to learn. The goals of My First Book of Korean Words are multiple: to familiarize children with the sounds and structure of Korean speech, to introduce core elements of Korean culture, to illustrate the ways in which languages differ in their treatment of everyday sounds and to show how, through cultural importation, a single word can be shared between languages.

Both teachers and parents will welcome the book's cultural and linguistic notes, and appreciate how the book is organized in a familiar ABC structure. Each word is presented in Hangeul, as well as in its Romanized form.

With the help of this book, we hope more children (and adults) will soon be a part of the nearly 80 million people worldwide that speak Korean!

Henry J. Amen, IV, is a freelance editor and writer of language learning materials; he studied Korean while working for a publishing company in Seoul for two years. Along with Kyubyong Park, he is the author of Korean for Beginners.

Aya Padron is a freelance artist who works with many media, among them painting and photography. She is the illustrator of Korean for Beginners.