These collections of words are based on the frequency lists published by the National Korean Language Institute, which can be googled up using the keyword “현대국어사용빈도조사결과파일”. 21st Century Seonbi provides a better introduction to this list than I could ever do.

What follows is a highly personal and idiosyncratic attempt at classifying these words in order to facilitate their learning. I've tried to discover and respect the patterns that appear naturally in Korean. The classification cuts across categories such as parts of speech, semantics, etymology and phonetics. Thus, you will find sections devoted to, say, native Korean words for mammals, verbs ending in -거리다 (which tend to describe certain types of repetitive actions), words that contain specific hanja (which classify themselves semantically, how nice), etc.

I'm not actively maintaining this section. The Nouns section is the one I've worked the most on by far. It's worth a look.

• Nouns
  • Native Korean nouns
  • Mixed origin nouns
  • Bound nouns
  • Monosyllabic nouns
• Verbs
  • Bisyllabic (native Korean) verbs
  • Native Korean Verbs with 3+ syllables (without 하다, 되다 or -거리다 verbs)
  • Native Korean 하다 verbs
  • Native Korean 되다 verbs
  • -거리다 verbs
  • Monosyllabic 하다 verbs
• Adjectives
  • Native Korean adjectives
  • Sino-Korean adjectives
  • Monosyllabic 하다 adjectives
• Adverbs
  • Native Korean adverbs
  • Sino-Korean adverbs
• Hanja
  • Basic hanja: list of 1800 basic hanja.
  • Words not covered by basic hanja.
• Others
  • Adnominals
  • Pronouns
  • Connectors
  • Exclamations
  • Repeated pairs
  • Auxiliary verbs
  • Cannot be analyzed into parts of speech
  • Homographs

Grammar books

• Korean Grammar for International Learners by Ihm Ho Bin, Hong Kyung Pyo and Chang Suk In. Yonsei University Press, 2001. 442pp.
• Korean: A Comprehensive Grammar by Jaehoon Yeon and Lucien Brown. Routledge, 2011. 476pp.
• Using Korean: a guide to contemporary usage by Miho Choo with Hye-Young Kwak. Cambridge University Press, 2008. 325pp.
• 韓語發音規則 完全攻略 by 鄭吉成. 統一出版社, 2010. 160pp.

Textbooks

• 文法から学べる韓国語, by 李 昌圭. ナツメ社, 2004. 224pp.
• 韓國語快樂學輕鬆說1 by 金美順. 統一出版社, 2010, 224pp.
• 韓國語快樂學輕鬆說2 by 金美順. 統一出版社, 2009, 224pp.
• 韓國語快樂學輕鬆說3 by 金美順. 統一出版社, 2009, 190pp.

Dictionaries

• Dong-A's Prime Korean-English dictionary. Doosan Dong-A, 1996. 2621pp.
• Si-sa Elite English-Korean & Korean-English Dictionary. YBM, 1997. 893+942pp.

Others

• How Koreans Talk: A Collection of Expressions by Sang-Hun Choe and Christopher Torchia. Unhengnamu, 2002. 308pp.

I'm indebted to J. David Eisenberg's extremely nice Introduction to Korean for my first hangul lessons.

Some history