i’m not sure where you are in your journey but my first piece of advice to anyone who is just starting would be to learn and get comfortable with hangul as quickly as possible. relying on romanization will not help you at all, you’ll learn much faster if you just get comfortable with hangul!

there’s a lot of free resources out there you can use like talktomeinkorean (i believe they switched to a paid model but they still have a lot of free content up especially on youtube), howtostudykorean.com (especially good for grammar). when you’re a little farther along i also like on naver dictionary the weverse examples section because it gives you more natural usage examples when searching up vocab.

also try to incorporate your studying into your daily life and interests you already have, like for example if you like watching gaming videos try searching if anyone is making them about that game in korean, or whatever hobby you may have. 1) since you’re already interested it’ll make studying feel less tedious and 2) it will give you access to vocab you’re already likely to want and use regularly so it’ll stick better.

don’t be afraid to watch more simplified content like kids shows or things aimed at beginners. mix up the levels of things you’re studying from. i also think it’s helpful sometimes to watch content made for korean speakers who are learning YOUR native language. like for me looking at content aimed at korean speakers learning english. it can help you understand grammar patterns in a different way.

for reading honestly my biggest advice is to get really into noraebang LOL i can’t think of a single other thing i’ve done over the past 6 years that improved my reading speed the way just…going to noraebang did. or you can just watch lyric videos on youtube and try to sing along

i don’t know if any of this is helpful but yeah basically i’d say trying to incorporate your studying into your daily life as much as possible and try to use as many different resources as you can

honestly i think it’s hard to say if it means anything without any announcement right now. i bought my membership as soon as it opened and on mine it says the usage period is 23/08/29 - 24/08/29 but a friend of mine who bought hers during second recruitment said hers says 24/01/24 - 25/01/24 so i think mnet just arbitrarily plugged in certain dates based off when you bought and a typical membership period.

that being said i agree we should know soon! i know we’re all hoping for at least some kind of extension but even if they don’t, i think they’d have to at least open recruitment one more time. plus whether they open 2기 or extend 1기, they can’t just let 1기 expire for people without either extending it, opening additional recruitment, or opening recruitment for 2기. so whatever they end up doing we should hear something soon!