Spoken by nearly 70 million people not only within the Korean Peninsula but also in five continents, Korean is one of a dozen major languages of the world. Yet outside Korea it is not as much studied as it should be, nor has it acquired commensurate international recognition. With its difficult sound system, rich word formation patterns, and complex sentence structures, Korean is one of the most challenging to learn as a foreign language, yet there is little that is written in English about Korean. This book eminently fills this gap. The author presents Korean in a lucid and readable manner covering topics from scripts to sounds, from words to sentences, and from discourse to text analysis. It is therefore both comprehensive and concise. It avoids unnecessary details but includes all essential subjects, and describes them in a well-organized theory-free prose. This book should be a handy reference for both teachers and students of Korean, especially those abroad.