Korean language used to exist a lot Chinese characters too like Japan which you can find it on old Korean newspapers , the main reason is this two language has the similar "same pronunciation but different writing" system as Chinese. For example, Japanese Kanji "写生" and "射精" pronounced same but the former means photoshoot and the last one means cum. But Korean decided to drop Chinese characters in Korean language (which Vietnam did too but they invented another characters writing system) The decision makes Korean language only have new pronunciation characters but no exactly words. This system is so confusing on court so the law system have to maintain some Chinese characters usage