[cowteriyaki]

You are thinking of Chinese characters. Unlike the Japanese where knowledge of Kanji is pretty much required to read texts above a certain level, they are optional in Korean.

It is true that a good portion of vocabulary are derived from Chinese words (hence they /can/ be spelled with Chinese characters), and maybe 30+ years ago it was common practice to have newspapers and textbooks writing complex words in Chinese characters. This is no longer the case, and pretty much all texts these days spell everything with the Korean alphabet. The practice of learning non-simplified Chinese characters of course is still common among Koreans for several reasons.

[yegle]

I'm curious about the "obsoletion" of Chinese characters over the last 30 years. How did it happen since the 1990s? Did it all happen organically from everyone or did the government start enforcing certain laws?

I knew the Simplified Chinese (commonly used in Mainland China) was pushed by the RPC government to replace Traditional Chinese. Did something similar happen in Korea?