A memory system includes a nonvolatile memory and a memory controller that encodes first XOR data generated by performing an exclusive OR operation on pieces of user data, wherein a value of each bit of the XOR data is generated by performing an exclusive OR operation on values of bits that are at one of a plurality of bit positions of a piece of user data, generates codewords by encoding the plurality of pieces of user data and the generated XOR data, respectively, and stores the codewords in the nonvolatile memory. The memory controller also performs a read operation by reading the codewords from the nonvolatile memory and decoding them. When the decoding of two or more of the codewords fails, the memory controller generates second XOR data, and corrects the value of one of the bits corresponding to a codeword whose decoding failed, based on the second XOR data.