🚀 go-pugleaf

My understanding was that newspaper articles and the occasional sign
use some Chinese characters in the ROK (while DPRK has gone to exclusive
use of hangul long ago).  How correct/incorrect is this impression?
If it's correct, is it possible to get along with only hangul in the South?
I'm sure you're right, that the useful of chines characters in East Asia
is limited, but I'm still inclined to think that "something is better than
nothing", and hence worth the effort... with the proviso that one better
be alert to the pitfalls you mentioned, and not overestimate the degree of
communication one is achieving (I learned the hard way about that long ago
in 1970 when I was almost thrown off a train in Peru because my policy
of smiling and saying "Si, si, bueno" when I really understood only 50%
of what was being said to me caused me to miss the message that the
roundtrip RR ticket I'd purchased had to be used within 24 hrs... evidently
that information was in the 50% I didn't comprehend).

Your soup/hot water anecdote rather reminds me of the Yank who asked by
a young lady in the UK to "come knock me up in the morning"...

George Partlow.......Delegito de UEA en la alaska regurbo, Juneau (Usono)
retposxto cxe: <71064.332@compuserve.com>...Pensu terglobe, agu surloke!
Ekzistas nur 2 klasoj de homoj: tiuj kiuj opinias, ke ekzistas nur 2 klasoj
de homoj, kaj tiuj kiuj malsamopinias... (Clifford Partlow, 1966)