Learn Korean the way detectives read evidence — closely.
Korean Whodunit started with a simple observation: language learners quit drills, but nobody walks out of a good mystery. So we stopped writing exercises and started writing crimes.
Every case on this site is an original murder mystery in which the decisive evidence is linguistic. A speech level that slips mid-sentence. An honorific that bows in the wrong direction. A verb ending that quietly confesses its speaker was in the room. The interface and story are in English, so you're never lost — but the clues are in Korean, and misreading one means the killer walks.
Textbooks teach Korean grammar as abstract rules to memorize. But features like 존댓말/반말 speech levels, the ~잖아 shared-knowledge suffix, honorific vocabulary, and the ~더라 evidential aren't rules — they're social information encoded in grammar. They tell you who the speaker thinks they are, who they're talking to, and what they've actually seen. That's exactly the kind of information a detective needs — and exactly the kind of understanding that separates learners who "know grammar" from learners who feel it.
When you catch a killer because 돌아가시다 can't describe its own author, you never forget how honorifics work. That's the entire teaching philosophy.
Four playable cases (from beginner-friendly to expert), a 20-minute Hangul tutorial for absolute beginners, and a growing library of grammar guides that go deep on the linguistic mechanics behind each case. Everything is free to play — the site is supported by ads on guide pages, never inside the cases.
All Korean content is written and checked carefully for accuracy, and we welcome corrections from native speakers. All cases are fictional; any resemblance to real persons or events is coincidental. If you spot Korean that reads unnaturally, tell us — corrections ship in the next update.
Ready to work a case? Start with the Hangul tutorial if you're brand new, or go straight to Case 1: The Red-Stained Script.