읽기와 응답: Reading and Responding
What this section tests
The reading section presents Korean texts - articles, notices, letters, blog posts, advertisements, literary extracts - and asks you to extract main ideas, locate detail, infer meaning from context, and identify the writer's purpose or tone. Texts range from everyday transactional language to short opinion pieces.
Concepts you must control
Recognise text type quickly from layout and formulaic language: -습니다 style and headings signal reportage; -해요 style with 해 주세요 signals a notice or request; 격식체 with -ㅂ니다 in a personal voice may be a formal letter. Connectives do the heavy lifting: however (그러나, 하지만), cause (때문에, -아서/어서), concession (그럼에도 불구하고), and enumeration (첫째, 둘째, 마지막으로). Understand nominalisation with -기 and -음/ㅁ, and the difference between -는데 as background and -지만 as contrast. Vocabulary in context matters more than dictionary glosses; 한자어 compounds (환경, 경제, 문화) recur.
Traps to expect
Options that are true in the real world but not stated in the text. Options that overstate with always/never equivalents (항상, 결코). Pronouns and omissions - Korean drops subjects, so identify who does what from context. Questions asking for the writer's purpose (알리려고, 설득하려고, 비판하려고) where the surface topic and the intent differ. In inference items, the correct answer is a modest restatement, not an imaginative leap.
Rule of thumb
Read the question stems first, then skim the text for the paragraph containing the keyword, then read that paragraph closely. For main-idea items, check whether the option covers the whole text or only one paragraph - partial coverage is the classic distractor.
Worked example
Text opens: "최근 청소년의 수면 시간이 줄고 있다. 그러나 전문가들은 이것이 단순한 습관 문제가 아니라고 지적한다." A question asks for the main idea. The correct option should combine both sentences: sleep is decreasing and experts say the cause is not merely habit. An option saying only "teenagers sleep less" is true but incomplete.