Others say...

"Satisfied customer"
This book was very useful. It is laid out well and has detailed information about what you needed to know to get around in Korea.

"Poorly organized and not very handy"
If your looking for an easy-reference, traveler's phrasebook...this certainly isnt for you. Buying this as a quick-reference guide to help me get through Korea for 2 weeks, I was rather dissapointed that all the phrases are kind of scattered throughout the book, while the whole first half is dedicated to grammar. If I wanted to actually learn the language, I'd have bought a text book, not a "phrase" book. At any rate, the organization of the book certainly made it hard to find what I was looking for when I needed it. And, while everything else is over descriptive, theres a very frustratingly small amount of info on numbers. They go into a lot of depth about the etimology of the numbers, but say only a few word on when to use what(i.e. these numbers are used over 100....well, how do I say 11,225...do I use all "Sino-korean" or do I mix in "Pure Korean">) In a country whose currency is set up such that few things cost lower than 1,000 won, a bit more explanation on numbers over 100 would be appreciated...and the "Quick Reference" number guide on the inside-back cover, since it only goes up to 100, is entirely worthless. Oh well, I guess I should've know since it's Lonely Planet.

"excellent"
This book is huge. LP korean phrasebook has everything you need and then some. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the language, studying it, or just looking for something to brush up on. Thanks amazon for the fast shipping.

"Very good pronounciation and grammar tips!"
While this title is not mainly a Korean /language/ title, or a book one expects to learn in depth language nicities, nonetheless, the book does an amazing job of condensing these minutiae very quickly, accurately, and somewhat completely (at a begginer level of course), in very clear language, without any weird linguist smarty pants fancy grammar jargon.

This is the intro. The rest of the book follows the content and layout of similar titles, and is fairly useful for the beginner.

"Could do better"
The Lonely Planet(LP) Korean phrase book contains all the things you would expect from it. Unlike other phrase books the LP book has a great introduction to the language with a brief but useful grammar section. LP phrase books always seem to be much more than just a phrase book.

However the grammar section only contains the romanisation of Korean rather than using the Korean script, Hangul. I think this would be a simple but very effective addition to the book.

Also I must say that one of the most useful and often entertaining parts of other LP phrase books I own(German and Italian) has been the "dating and romance" section. This section of the Korean book is neither useful nor entertaining. It is simply far too conservative. I assume it has been kept in line with the old confusion traditions of the country, but Korean is now a modern westernised country and far more open and liberal than in the past. It would be nice for LP to reflect this in the subject matter of their phrase book.