Memorize TOPIK I Vocabulary: 518 Korean Words Grouped by Theme

Deck TG4028 — TOPIK I Vocabulary holds 518 English-to-Korean cards, every back written in Hangul with romanization in brackets. It is organised by theme rather than by exam frequency, so treat it as a beginner vocabulary base for TOPIK levels 1 and 2 rather than as the official word list — the real exam also leans heavily on particles and verb endings, which this deck does not teach.

Sample cards

The themes inside the 518 cards

Greetings and pronouns, family terms (형, 언니, 동생, 할아버지), the house and its furniture, food and drink, transport, days, months and seasons, numbers and money, colours, descriptive verbs for size, speed, beauty and mood, roughly 106 action verbs from 먹다 to 떠나다, the body from 머리카락 down to 발가락, health and hospital words (약, 의사, 간호사), clothing, school and work, culture and society, weather, animals, question words, demonstratives, adverbs of frequency and quantity, conjunctions, taste adjectives, and a closing block of about 25 set phrases (실례합니다, 괜찮아요, 잘 지내요).

Fix these cards before your first session

• Card 502, "please → 제발". 제발 is pleading, closer to I beg you. The everyday please is the ending ~주세요 (물 주세요, water please). Rewrite it.
• Card 506, "good morning → 좋은 아침". A direct calque. Koreans greet with 안녕하세요 at any hour; 좋은 아침 sounds translated.
• Card 6, "you → 너". That is banmal, fine with close friends and rude with a stranger or a teacher. Most of the time Korean simply drops the pronoun or uses the person's title.
• Card 481, "thick → 두껍다". The romanization is broken mid-word ("dukk eopda" should read dukkeopda).

Two study decisions that matter

Drill this deck one direction only. Eight backs appear twice with different fronts: 눈 is both snow and eye, 쓰다 is to write and bitter, 일어나다 is to wake up and to happen, 모두 covers all and everyone, 아직 covers still and yet. English-to-Korean works; the reverse direction is unanswerable, so do not switch it on.

Patch the numbers block yourself. Cards 112 to 124 teach 하나, 둘, 셋 up to 열 — the native Korean set — then jump straight to 백, 천, 만, which are Sino-Korean. You cannot mix them, and the Sino digits 일 이 삼 사 오 are missing entirely even though 돈 and 원 arrive two cards later. Prices, dates, phone numbers and minutes all use the Sino set: add those ten cards before you touch the money vocabulary.

One more habit: cover the bracketed romanization with your thumb from day one. TOPIK I is printed entirely in Hangul, and readers who lean on transliteration for 518 words lose weeks unlearning it.

Ready for the next level? See how to learn TOPIK II vocabulary.

Look for deck TG4028 — TOPIK I Vocabulary in your library on Flip It.