Chinese characters have always been used in Korean history. It was not until the middle of15th century that North Korea invented phonography, which was called "training people to correct their pronunciation" at that time, but the ruling class still used Chinese characters at that time. After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, South Korea changed from using Chinese characters alone to combining Chinese characters with pinyin characters. After the Korean Peninsula became a Japanese colony, the use of its own phonography became a symbol for the Korean people to resist Japanese colonial rule and carry forward the national spirit. After the establishment of the Korean government, the Special Law on Phonetic Representation was enacted, which stipulated that all government documents should use phonography. However, in the additional clauses of official documents, it is allowed to use both Chinese characters and pinyin characters. 1968, South Korean President park chung-hee banned the use of Chinese characters in official documents, and Chinese characters were no longer used in textbooks.

In recent years, with the development of Sino-Korean relations, especially the rapid growth of economic and trade relations between the two countries, South Korea has set off a "Chinese style", and it has become fashionable to learn Chinese and use Chinese characters. In 2000, the Korean government announced the resumption of Chinese character education and the use of Chinese characters. The main contents include: restoring the use of Chinese characters that have disappeared for many years in official documents and city street signs; Carry out "1800 compulsory education of commonly used Chinese characters" in primary and secondary schools. In this context, the Korean government's current decision to decriminalize the law has attracted more attention.

Abandoning Chinese characters makes South Korea poor in knowledge and thought.

Many Koreans are worried about removing Chinese characters, one of the important reasons is that it is easy to cause confusion in understanding. Due to historical reasons, about 70% of Korean vocabulary comes from Chinese, and there are many homonyms, while Korean is phonography, so it is easy to cause ambiguity without Chinese characters. For example, in Korean, stories, ancient temples, ancient characters and dying are homonyms, and the writing in Korean is the same. With a single Korean character, people simply can't understand what it means. Because of this, Li Yingxiu, a former judge of the Seoul High Court, said: "If the legal provisions requiring the use of Chinese characters are replaced by Korean, it will be difficult for ordinary citizens and experts to understand."

In response to some people's view that only by abandoning Chinese characters and using Korean can we carry forward the national spirit, Zhao Chun, president of the Korean National Culture Promotion Association, pointed out: "If all Korean languages are used, we will become a second-rate country, and our descendants will not even understand history." At present, people aged 20-40 in Korea hardly know Chinese characters, because they haven't learned Chinese characters for a long time. Korean monuments all use Chinese characters, and young people don't know them at all.

South Korean scholar Park Chung-pei said: "Korea and China are close neighbors and have maintained friendly cultural exchanges for more than 2,000 years. China's advanced culture has had a great influence on the development of Korean culture ... Although Chinese character culture originated in China, it is also the common wealth of orientals and even all mankind ... Korea should not only attach importance to Chinese character culture, but also make new contributions to its development. " Many Korean experts even said that the abandonment of Chinese characters made Korean society poor in knowledge, philosophy and thought.

Economic groups such as Korea National Federation of Economic Agents, Korea Chamber of Commerce and Korea Trade Association even asked the government to promote the use of Chinese characters. They agreed that with the increase of economic exchanges between South Korea, China and Japan, Chinese characters are becoming more and more important. They suggest that member companies take the Chinese character exam when recruiting new employees. Li Xiying, vice president of the Korea Trade Association, said: "Chinese characters are a necessary factor in establishing an economic center in Northeast Asia. If Korean employees can improve their ability to express Chinese characters, the company can finally ensure competitiveness. "

I am afraid that forcibly removing Chinese characters will bring serious consequences. Recently, the Ministry of Justice of South Korea and the Legal Affairs Department of the Prime Minister's Office held a joint working meeting, arguing that eight basic laws, including civil law, criminal law and commercial law, have temporarily stopped implementing Korean culture and are only being implemented gradually as medium-and long-term plans.