Re: Chinese writing systems

>I read in an article in one of the Taiwanese equivalents to "Time" a
>while back that proficiency in even the basic characters needed is on
>the wane. One of the examples cited was that characters were still
>required for names on legal documents like driver's licenses. Trouble
>was, if a policeman pulled you over for something, chances were he
>had no way of reading it. I thought Korean only used a couple of
>hundred hanj'a in common use (strictly limited to newspaper headlines
>and the like), but enthusiasm is diminishing radically to learning
>even those.
>
>Kou
For north korea, i asked my classmate who is from there. His answers is worth what
it's worth, but it more or less this:

"we don't use hanzi for books or news papers. But every body, not only highly
educated people, still have to learn something like 800 to 1000 in high school"

Learning something in highschool does not not really mean they all can use it, but it
is certainly more than nothing.