The Korean reading time estimator predicts how long a passage of Korean will take to read. It uses syllable blocks per minute rather than the words-per-minute figure common for English, because Korean spacing groups stems with their particles into eojeol of uneven length. Counting the steadier unit — the Hangul syllable block — gives a more reliable estimate.
How it works
The tool counts the composed Hangul syllable blocks in your text, those in the Unicode range U+AC00–U+D7A3, and divides that count by your chosen reading rate. The average rate of about 500 blocks per minute reflects typical silent reading of general Korean prose; a slower 350 suits dense or technical material and a faster 650 suits skimming. The resulting minutes are displayed rounded to minutes and seconds. Non-Hangul characters such as Latin letters, digits and punctuation do not contribute to the timing, since the benchmark is calibrated specifically for Korean script.
Notes and example
A short greeting like 안녕하세요 is five syllable blocks, well under a second at any pace, so it shows as a few seconds. A 2,000-block article at the average 500-block rate works out to about four minutes. Because reading speed varies with the reader and the difficulty of the text, treat the number as a planning aid — useful for labelling article read-times or comparing the length of two drafts — rather than an exact stopwatch. Everything is computed locally in your browser.