Time is the real opponent: 50 questions, 70 minutes
TOPIK I: 40 questions, 60 minutes, 100 points. TOPIK II: 50 questions, 70 minutes, 100 points — 84 seconds per question, including reading the passage. Questions run from easy to hard: single sentences and grammar first, two- or three-paragraph analytical texts last. Reading is the final section, when fatigue is highest.
Grammar or word for a blank, the expression with the closest meaning, what a text is (notice, advert, instructions), putting sentences in the correct order, the statement that matches the passage, main idea, where a given sentence belongs in the text, the author's purpose or mood, understanding content from a newspaper headline (questions 25–27). Each type appears at the same question numbers every round.
Finish the first 20–25 questions in 20 minutes — they are easy, but worth nearly as much as the hard ones. For long passages read the question first, then the text: if you know what you are looking for, you do not need every word. Do not stall on an unknown word — infer it from context. With ten minutes left, mark every remaining question; a blank never helps.
Untimed reading practice is nearly useless for TOPIK. Always work with a timer and note which question types eat your time. For vocabulary, add unknown words from past papers to MOON flashcards and review daily — TOPIK vocabulary repeats 70–80% from round to round. If you are aiming high, add one Korean newspaper article a day.
Reading is the one section where you decide the sequence, and that is the advantage most candidates throw away. Eighty-four seconds per question is the average, but the questions are nothing like equal: the early grammar items take twenty seconds and the final passages take three minutes each.
Work the front of the paper fast and bank the time for the back. A candidate who spends four minutes rescuing question 9 and then meets question 48 with ninety seconds left has traded a hard mark for an easy one.
The habit that costs the most marks is silently rendering each Korean sentence into your own language before deciding what it means. It roughly halves your speed and it is the reason so many people who "know the words" still run out of time.
The cure is uncomfortable and it works: read timed, always, even in practice, and accept a rougher understanding in exchange for finishing. Comprehension at speed improves with practice. The translating habit does not go away on its own — it has to be starved.
For every passage, read the stem before the text. Whether you are being asked for the main idea, for one specific detail, or for the writer's attitude changes how you should read the same paragraph. Knowing it in advance lets you skim what does not matter, which is most of it.
For the "which of these matches the text" items, work by elimination against the passage rather than by picking what feels right. Three options will contain something the text does not say; find that thing rather than trying to confirm the fourth.
A small group of items shows a Korean news headline and asks what it means. Headlines drop particles and verbs, compress a clause into a noun, and use a comma where a whole verb should be. They are a separate skill from ordinary reading.
They are also cheap to train. Read a few headlines a day from any Korean news site, expand each one into a full sentence in your head, then read the article and check. Two weeks of that turns the hardest short questions on the paper into free marks.
The words that decide the back of the Reading section are not exotic. They are the connectives and the hedges — however, therefore, on the other hand, it is said that, it seems that. Those are what carry the writer's position, and the writer's position is what the hard questions ask about.
When you review a past paper, do not only list nouns you did not know. List every connective you had to stop and think about. That list is shorter and worth far more.