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tnova | 5 years ago
Hangul is the script you are thinking of, which was invented and introduced in the 15th century by King Sejong.
However, there are many Chinese loan words in Korean language, especially on an academic level. You can even find Chinese characters in Korea today, usually in newspapers, on street or restaurant signs. For example, the Korean word for "president" is 대통령 (Taet'ongnyeong), but in newspapers it may be written as 大統領, which are the matching Chinese characters.
Also, most Korean parents choose Chinese characters to write for their children's names, which read (more or less, as Korean does not have tones) the same as the Korean characters.
tanilama|5 years ago
I navigate from time to time to Korean website, very few occasion they actually uses Chinese characters, except:
1. Some countries names. 中(China)/美(US)/日(Japan)/北(North Korea)
2. Blue House (think of it as Korean's White House, representing the headquarters of the administration), sometimes referred as 青(Blue).
3. The president's surname, sometimes referred as 文(Moon)
Except for those very limited cases, I don't think Korean people are actually using Hanja anymore, it almost feel like some sort of emoji for then, that they probably can't read it, just comprehend the meaning.
As to Korean names, yes I think they still have a Chinese name registered somewhere, but no longer required and not shown on their government ID card.
eru|5 years ago