You can seriously learn Hangul in like a few hours, folks, definitely give it a shot! It's an incredibly elegant and logical system for representing sounds; unlike (for example) Japanese kana, which are derived from Chinese characters and thus have no internal logic to their forms (no way to infer that か ka and く ku both start with /k/), Hangul was designed for Korean from the ground up with a linguistic approach, so unaspirated ㄱ /k/ becomes strongly aspirated ㅋ /kʰ/ by adding a stroke, and the form of the character even represents how the tongue is retracted and touching the palate. You can mechanically apply this exact same process to get the alveolars ㄷ/ㅌ (/t/ /tʰ/), and with slightly different strokes the alveolars ㅅ/ㅈ/ㅊ (/s/ /tɕ/ /tɕʰ/; ㅅ represents a tooth) and labials ㅁ/ㅂ/ㅍ (/m/ /p/ /pʰ/; ㅁ represents a mouth). Throw in ㅎ /h/, ㄴ /n/, and ㄹ /l/, plus the doubled consonants ㄸ/ㄲ/ㅆ/ㅉ, and boom, you're done with the consonants!
Even if you never learn the language, it's nice to be able to read menus and signs and stuff. And if you speak Chinese, Japanese, or Vietnamese, you can start to pick out shared Sinitic vocabulary once you learn the patterns of correspondence:
Korean is much more like Chinese than Japanese in that characters rarely have more than one pronunciation, so the correspondences are more durable.
You got this! It's no big deal if you're a bit behind at the start, anyhow—it is a year-long reading group, after all, so you've got plenty of time to catch up. The first few chapters are supposed to be the toughest, so don't let that discourage you—just try to read a bit every day, and you'll get there! I've been doing a half hour here, a half hour there, and I think I should finish chapter one in the next day or two. As soon as I can feel my eyes start to glaze over and notice I'm re-reading the same paragraph over and over, I know it's time to take a break and do something else for a bit.