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Northern Virginia, and Annandale in particular, is home to a robust Korean community, where signage displays Hangul lettering and where Korean restaurants, churches, grocery stores, bakeries and beauty stores abound.

Using the Korean hangul alphabet, she repeatedly writes a single word, such as “love,” “mother” or “human,” and then shreds and arranges the text.

The Korean course also uses romanizations in some of its games, rather than Hangul, while pretty much any other Korean resource gets you away from romanizations as quickly as possible.

It’s been mostly teaching me to read basic Hangul, one letter at a time, for months now — most Korean learners I know needed at most a couple days to get Hangul down.

When I learned how to read Hangul, the Korean alphabet, and could understand signs and ingredients, my heart sang.