How to Read Korean Newspapers for Free

 Reading newspapers is known as a good way to learn advanced vocabulary and to know the culture and latest information of the country and the world. So, if you are studying Korean, reading Korean newspapers will help you understand Korean culture as well as your Korean language skills.

 It’s also nice to read online newspaper’s articles, but it’s not easy to choose what to read because information is flooded. Thus, if you can see the articles in the published paper newspaper, you can acquire refined information.

 Unfortunately, you can’t see the paper as it is, such as WSJ’s ‘print edition’ service. However, you can only read articles in the published newspaper through the following process. There is no need to worry about copyright because it is a service provided by Naver, the Korea’s largest portal site, at a cost to each newspaper.

1. How to read?

1-1 PC

https://news.naver.com/main/officeList.nhn

 Go to the link above, and you can see a news list by media. The newspaper-shaped icon next to the media name means that the media publishes the newspaper. So, if you want to read an article in a newspaper, choose the media with the newspaper-shaped icon. I will explain the following process based on the ‘조선일보’ (朝鮮日報, The Chosun Ilbo), because it has the largest number of subscribers in the subscriber ranking.

 Click the ‘신문게재기사만’ item.

 Then you can only read articles published in the newspaper.

 If you click on the calendar-shaped icon, you can also see the newspaper articles of the past date, as shown in the picture above. If you want to read the newspaper on the day, you don’t have to click on the icon.

1-2 Mobile

https://news.naver.com/main/officeList.nhn

 Mobile is the same way. Choose the newspaper you want to read.

 Click on the ‘지면뉴스’ section.

 Click on the calendar-shaped icon if you want to see the newspaper articles of the past date, just like the way on PC.

 If you have enough time, you can read all the newspapers published. But since most are not, selection and concentration will be required. To do this, it would be helpful to know the subscriber rankings (daily newspapers circulation) and political tendency of newspapers.

2. Daily newspapers circulation

http://www.kabc.or.kr/about/notices

 한국ABC (KOREA AUDIT BUREAU OF CERTIFICATION) regularly publishes daily newspapers circulation.

http://www.kabc.or.kr/about/notices/100000002843?param.page=&param.category=&param.keyword=

 The above link is the circulation of daily newspapers published in 2018 (and the circulation for 2019 will be issued in 2020). You can check the ranking of circulation through the PDF file (2018년도(2017년도분) 일간신문 166개사 인증부수-최종.pdf (95449 KB)) attached at the bottom.

3. Political tendency of newspapers

 However, in order to choose the right newspaper for you, political biases should also be considered as well as the circulation.

 There is a lot of controversy about what the newspaper’s political orientation is. The content in the following table is the generally known political orientation of newspaper.

The political tendency of daily newspapers

Liberal	Moderate	Conservative
한겨레 경향신문	한국일보 서울신문	조선일보 동아일보 중앙일보 문화일보 국민일보 세계일보

The political tendency of financial newspapers

Liberal	Moderate	Conservative
머니투데이 이데일리	파이낸셜뉴스	매일경제 한국경제 서울경제 헤럴드경제 아시아경제

 Within the same column, newspapers are arranged in order of circulation.

 You can tell by reading for yourself whether a newspaper really suits you. But considering the above factors, the trial and error could be reduced considerably. I hope this will help you choose the newspaper that suits you.