Probably because Americans hate North Korea, Korean is popular.
Korea used to be a country that used Chinese characters. It is said that the ancestors of Koreans were Zhou Wang's uncle in Shang Dynasty. After the demise of Shang Dynasty, they were named korean king by the Zhou Emperor. When the Qin Dynasty unified the six countries, it didn't go to North Korea. Therefore, Chinese characters have been passed down to the present. Because of their connection with the Han nationality, Chinese characters are not tadpoles, but also regular scripts like ours. They used Chinese characters before the Tang Dynasty.
You can't believe all the legends, and neither can you. After all, they were indeed vassal states that were created by Zhou. The heaven they admire is definitely not Manchu. Because the emperor of Manchu used Manchu, like earthworms. Now many Manchu people don't recognize themselves.
It can be verified that North Korea was a country that only used Chinese characters before 100 years ago. Not only official documents, but also words in daily life. The ruling class and two classes in Korea use Chinese characters to write letters and create. North Korea's ambassador to Japan of Tokugawa shogunate chose an official with high attainments in Chinese as his post. They talked with Japanese Confucians and monks in Chinese characters and improvised China's poems. North Korea is just a common people who have no connection with Chinese characters.
The Korean characters we see now are actually called Korean phonetic characters, which were created in 1443. Sejong of the Korean dynasty ordered the creation of an easy-to-learn phonography for ordinary people. According to the king's command, scholars created a phonography composed of 1 1 vowels and 14 consonants. When this official script was promulgated, it was called "training the people to correct their pronunciation". However, the ruling class still only uses Chinese characters. Women and children use pinyin. Articles written in pinyin are called proverbs and are discriminated against.
After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, South Korea launched the "Civilization" movement. In the reform of "changing Zhang", the feudal system was attacked and the solar calendar was introduced into South Korea. Since then, the excessive use of Chinese characters in books and texts has changed to the combination of Chinese characters and pinyin characters. South Korea became a Japanese colonial era, and it was determined that "Chinese (referring to Japan) and Chinese characters should be used at the same time". At that time, North Korean phonetic alphabet scholars were regarded as followers of anti-Japanese thought and were brutally suppressed. During the Second World War, the Governor's Office ordered the dissolution of the Korean Society that studied phonography, and some scholars were arrested and imprisoned. Due to the above historical reasons, the use of phonography became a symbol of nationalism and was regarded as a symbol of anti-Japanese patriotism.
1945, South Korea was rescued from colonial rule. New Korea advocates nationalism. Scholars of phonetic writing stand at the forefront of carrying forward the national spirit and put forward that all phonetic writing is equal to patriotism. 1948 as soon as the government was established, it immediately enacted the special law on phonograms, which stipulated that all official documents should use phonograms. However, the additional clauses of official documents allow the use of Chinese characters and phonetic symbols.
Korean phonetic characters consist of 10 vowels and 14 consonants. Its advantage is that it is easy to learn. Even foreigners can read correctly as long as they master the spelling combination method. However, being able to read aloud is one thing, and understanding the meaning is another. There are serious "blind spots" in Korean phonetic symbols that all use pinyin characters.
Korean words are similar to Japanese words, and 70% of them come from ideographic Chinese. If you only use phonetic words to record things, there will obviously be confusion. Because there are many homophones.
Take Korean surnames as an example. Zheng Heding, Jiang Hekang, Liu and Lin are all homonyms. In addition, there are many homonyms in the words. For example, 22 words such as story, ancient temple, investigation, old saying, leaving and dying are homophones; Fraud, morale, death and social flags are homophonic; Maneuver, transfer, prophase and war stories homonym; Input and income are homonyms ... they are often encountered in newspapers, because the use of phonetic alphabet makes readers feel headache about its meaning, and they need to guess like riddles (try to imagine that we abandon Chinese characters and use Chinese Pinyin to read the ancient poem "A lonely smoke in the desert, a long river sets the yen"-a ghost), which is quite time-consuming. It's like the Japanese reading a telegram sent under a pseudonym. If the telegram uses pseudonyms and Chinese characters, the meaning will be clear at a glance. Chinese characters, as hieroglyphics, are easy to identify in appearance. But phonetic characters can't. Due to the limited use of phonography, almost all Korean newspapers, magazines and street signs use phonography. Japanese who come to Korea feel embarrassed that they can't read road signs and shop signs. Japanese tourists who don't know Korean road signs feel more like foreign countries in Korea than in Hong Kong. All Japanese who have been to Korea complain that they can't read street signs.
It is not Japanese tourists who suffer the most, but the younger generation of South Korea who only know phonetic characters. When they got off the plane at Narita International Airport in Japan, they didn't know the exit sign written in Chinese characters. As a non-Chinese character cultural circle, Korean students studying in Japan should receive Chinese character education again. Korean college students can't read books mixed with Chinese characters, and they are also struggling to read classical literature. The professor lamented the students' lack of knowledge of Chinese characters. In this way, the ancient Korean culture will be buried in the hands of the next generation.
In addition, this joke doesn't happen from time to time: the police let the suspect go because they couldn't understand the name written in Chinese on the ID card. Those who advocate using all pinyin characters have also noticed the above disadvantages and want to replace Chinese with pure Korean.
However, just as Japan has Yamato language that has nothing to do with Chinese, South Korea also has pure Korean language. Like language, Yamato lacks abstraction and language creativity. Advocates of phonography have also coined some words, such as describing airplanes as "flying devices" but they can't be popularized. In South Korea, people are suffering from "knowledge anemia" while using pinyin in an all-round way.
Korean law stipulates that phonetic symbols are used as special characters. 1948 after independence, in order to carry forward the national spirit, the government formulated a special law on Korean phonetic characters, stipulating that official documents can only be written in phonetic characters. However, due to historical reasons, Chinese characters are temporarily allowed to be used concurrently. Since 1970, Chinese characters in Korean primary and secondary school textbooks have been cancelled, and Korean phonetic symbols have been used completely. In the next 30 years, Chinese characters were completely abolished in primary schools, and only 1800 Chinese characters were taught to junior high school and senior high school students. This is the reason why Korean people aged 20-40 almost don't understand Chinese characters at all. They are called "the generation of phonetic characters".
It's long and messy, mainly extracting some information. I want to express my gratitude to those who have read this article.