Reading Korean books with e-reader

Kindle vs Android

I have been using Kindle for 10 years, I have used two of them. I am now using Kindle paperwhite. However, reading Korean on Kindle is really not the best choice. The Korean font isn’t pretty. And for Korean learners who need dictionary, like me, it is really not reliable. It is cheap though, so if your Korean is good enough or you don’t mind checking dictionary by another way, Kindle is a good choice.

For the same book, the fonts for android e-reader using yes24 eBook (left) and kindle (right)

Basically the only “dictionary” you can use is Bing Translate… Not even google translate

I have searched and found that it is almost impossible to change from the default Bing translate into google translate for Kindle. And online access is needed for using Bing translate.

Theoretically you can add a Korean dictionary, but I tried all methods I can find online and failed

Recently I bought an Android e-ink e-reader to read books for my Scribd subscription and also for my occasional Korean reading. I got Like Muses, it is already a fairly cheap model, but it is still 3 times more expensive than my Kindle. There are a lot of reviews online saying the screen of this brand is prone to cracking, the salesperson of course said that was due to carelessness of the customers, well… Personally I seldom use my e-reader outside, so I thought it should be okay for me to buy this. My concern lies more on security of electronic products made in China, and so I created a google account specifically for it. Basically all android e-readers can have the same function with the same apps, so I don’t have a particular model to recommend.

The app I like the most for reading Korean is yes24 eBook (예스24 eBook), well, it is an app from Korea, of course it is optimised for reading Korean.

For the same book, the fonts for yes24 eBook (left) and moonreader (right)

Yes 24 eBook app got a much nicer reading experience, and we can use online naver dictionary for it, however, for Moonreader, we can use the dictionary offline.

Moonreader has offline dictionary but the dictionary cannot check Korean words that are not in their basic form

Words need to be converted back to the original forms before they can be found

To use the offline dictionary for moonreader, you need to install Goldendict and Korean stardict. Only this version of Goldendict works (source of information), and this is the stardict I am using.

For Yes24 app, naver dictionary can be used, so words can be found easily, no matter what forms they are in, however it can only be accessed online

My kindle paperwhite and my Likebook Muses. Lockscreen of Likebook muses can be changed.

Of course one can also choose to use e-readers specific for Korean books, however, I like the freedom of reading books from different sources and different languages and more functions, so I prefer Android e-reader more.

P.S. This launcher of Likebook e-reader is really ugly, and some of the apps stayed in the simplified Chinese form despite the fact that I have set my language to be English. (I tried a few different launchers, however, none of them are really suitable for this e-reader, so I am stuck with it.)