Online Korean test preparation courses for the TOPIK exam

The TOPIK (Test of Proficiency in Korean) is South Korea's official Korean exam. The National Institute for International Education (NIIED), an agency of the Ministry of Education, runs it, and Korean universities, scholarship programmes and employers use it as proof of Korean. The TOPIK has its own scale of six levels and does not use the CEFR, the European scale from A1 to C2, so there is no official conversion between the two.

The TOPIK works as a score-based test within each part. You do not register for a single level. You sit TOPIK I or TOPIK II, and your total score decides your level. TOPIK I awards level 1 from 80 and level 2 from 140 of 200 points. TOPIK II awards level 3 from 120, level 4 from 150, level 5 from 190 and level 6 from 230 of 300 points.

For your preparation this means that you work towards a target score. A learner aiming at level 4 needs at least 150 of 300 points in TOPIK II, which is 50 points on average in each of the three sections. A weak writing section can therefore be balanced by strong listening and reading results, and a preparation course should do this calculation with you.

NIIED offers the TOPIK in four formats. All of them take place at test centres, and none can be taken from home.

The paper tests have a fixed structure. Each section carries 100 points.

In TOPIK II, listening and writing form the first session and reading the second. For 2026, the Ministry of Education announced six paper-based sessions, five of them also abroad, according to Korea JoongAng Daily.

The TOPIK level you need follows from your goal. Each university and employer sets its own rule, and these values are common.

• A first milestone after one or two years of a course is TOPIK I with level 1 or 2.
• Admission to a degree taught in Korean usually requires TOPIK II with at least level 3, and many universities ask for level 4 to graduate.
• Graduate grantees of the Global Korea Scholarship (GKS), the South Korean government scholarship, skip the one-year Korean course if they hold level 5 or higher.
• Work in Korean on specialist topics calls for level 5 or 6, because level 5 describes the language needed for research and professional work.

A TOPIK score is valid for two years from the day the results are announced. Your exam date therefore has to fit your application, and a score that is too old no longer counts for universities, authorities or scholarship bodies.

Besides the TOPIK, learners collect other documents, and these prove less.

• Course certificates from Sejong Institutes or university language centres show which course level you completed. The King Sejong Institute Foundation is the South Korean government body that runs Sejong Institutes worldwide.
• Transcripts from Korean studies programmes at universities show credits and grades in Korean.
• Certificates from online course providers usually confirm attendance only.

Korean universities, scholarship bodies and authorities ask for the TOPIK, so these documents serve as supporting evidence at most. A course certificate can still help in a job application abroad, where it shows how long and at which level you have studied.

Online preparation suits the TOPIK, because listening and reading consist of multiple-choice tasks with four options that you can practise alone. Writing is different. The TOPIK II writing part has four tasks, two sentence completions, a descriptive text and an argumentative essay, and it needs feedback from a teacher.

1. Check on topik.go.kr whether your test centre offers the paper or the computer version, and practise in that format.
2. Train your timing, because TOPIK II puts 60 minutes of listening and 50 minutes of writing into one session.
3. Write the essays in the plain written style ending in -da, the neutral style of Korean texts, and have a teacher correct them.
4. Build vocabulary in Sino-Korean word families, since many words in reading texts share roots from Chinese.
5. Register early, because places abroad are limited, and sit at least two full mock tests under time pressure.